Rumi Quotes

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about.

The wound is the place where the Light enters you.

Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.

Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.

What you seek is seeking you.

Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.

The minute I heard my first love story, I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along.

Dance, when you're broken open. Dance, if you've torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you're perfectly free.

If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?

Don't be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.

When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.

You were born with wings, why prefer to crawl through life?

Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious.

Knock, And He'll open the door Vanish, And He'll make you shine like the sun Fall, And He'll raise you to the heavens Become nothing, And He'll turn you into everything.

When I am with you, we stay up all night. When you're not here, I can't go to sleep. Praise God for those two insomnias! And the difference between them.

Raise your words, not voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.

My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that, and I intend to end up there.

silence is the language of god, all else is poor translation.

Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.

In your light I learn how to love. In your beauty, how to make poems. You dance inside my chest where no-one sees you, but sometimes I do, and that sight becomes this art.

Ignore those that make you fearful and sad, that degrade you back towards disease and death.

Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along.

Everything in the universe is within you. Ask all from yourself.

Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure.

Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because for those who love with heart and soul there is no such thing as separation.

I want to sing like the birds sing, not worrying about who hears or what they think.

Let yourself be drawn by the stronger pull of that which you truly love.

Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

Words are a pretext. It is the inner bond that draws one person to another, not words.

There is a candle in your heart, ready to be kindled. There is a void in your soul, ready to be filled. You feel it, don't you?

Travel brings power and love back into your life.

Set your life on fire. Seek those who fan your flames

Be empty of worrying. Think of who created thought! Why do you stay in prison When the door is so wide open?

I know you're tired but come, this is the way.

I want to see you. Know your voice. Recognize you when you first come 'round the corner. Sense your scent when I come into a room you've just left. Know the lift of your heel, the glide of your foot. Become familiar with the way you purse your lips then let them part, just the slightest bit, when I lean in to your space and kiss you. I want to know the joy of how you whisper "more

Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

Suffering is a gift. In it is hidden mercy.

A thousand half-loves must be forsaken to take one whole heart home.

We come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust.

And you? When will you begin that long journey into yourself?

Two there are who are never satisfied -- the lover of the world and the lover of knowledge.

This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without feet.

Wherever you are, and whatever you do, be in love.

Be melting snow. Wash yourself of yourself.

Be like the sun for grace and mercy. Be like the night to cover others' faults. Be like running water for generosity. Be like death for rage and anger. Be like the Earth for modesty. Appear as you are. Be as you appear.

Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray.

Respond to every call that excites your spirit.

I have lived on the lip of insanity, wanting to know reasons, knocking on a door. It opens. I've been knocking from the inside.

You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens.

Take someone who doesn't keep score, who's not looking to be richer, or afraid of losing, who has not the slightest interest even in his own personality: he's free.

Sit, be still, and listen, because you're drunk and we're at the edge of the roof.

Either give me more wine or leave me alone.

Come, come, whoever you are. Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving. It doesn't matter. Ours is not a caravan of despair. come, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times. Come, yet again , come , come.

People want you to be happy. Don't keep serving them your pain! If you could untie your wings and free your soul of jealousy, you and everyone around you would fly up like doves.

The cure for pain is in the pain.

Start a huge, foolish project, like Noah…it makes absolutely no difference what people think of you.

I closed my mouth and spoke to you in a hundred silent ways.

What hurts you, blesses you. Darkness is your candle.

Reason is powerless in the expression of Love.

But listen to me. For one moment quit being sad. Hear blessings dropping their blossoms around you.

These pains you feel are messengers. Listen to them.

When you go through a hard period, When everything seems to oppose you, ... When you feel you cannot even bear one more minute, NEVER GIVE UP! Because it is the time and place that the course will divert!

A mountain keeps an echo deep inside. That's how I hold your voice.

You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.

That which God said to the rose, and caused it to laugh in full-blown beauty, He said to my heart, and made it a hundred times more beautiful.

This being human is a guest house. Every morning is a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor...Welcome and entertain them all. Treat each guest honorably. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

Who could be so lucky? Who comes to a lake for water and sees the reflection of moon.

If you desire healing, let yourself fall ill let yourself fall ill.

Study me as much as you like, you will not know me, for I differ in a hundred ways from what you see me to be. Put yourself behind my eyes and see me as I see myself, for I have chosen to dwell in a place you cannot see.

Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place.

Christian, Jew, Muslim, shaman, Zoroastrian, stone, ground, mountain, river, each has a secret way of being with the mystery, unique and not to be judged

You wander from room to room Hunting for the diamond necklace That is already around your neck!

You are the universe in ecstatic motion.

I didn't come here of my own accord, and I can't leave that way. Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.

Oh soul, you worry too much. You have seen your own strength. You have seen your own beauty. You have seen your golden wings. Of anything less, why do you worry? You are in truth the soul, of the soul, of the soul.

My heart is so small it's almost invisible. How can You place such big sorrows in it? "Look," He answered, "your eyes are even smaller, yet they behold the world.

Run from what's comfortable. Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious. I have tried prudent planning long enough. From now on I'll be mad.

Only from the heart can you touch the sky.

I was dead, then alive. Weeping, then laughing. The power of love came into me, and I became fierce like a lion, then tender like the evening star.

The breezes at dawn have secrets to tell you Don't go back to sleep! You must ask for what you really want. Don't go back to sleep! People are going back and forth across the doorsill where the two worlds touch, The door is round and open Don't go back to sleep!

In Silence there is eloquence. Stop weaving and see how the pattern improves.

Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder. Help someone's soul heal. Walk out of your house like a shepherd.

Do you know what you are? You are a manuscript oƒ a divine letter. You are a mirror reflecting a noble face. This universe is not outside of you. Look inside yourself; everything that you want, you are already that.

You were born with potential. You were born with goodness and trust. You were born with ideals and dreams. You were born with greatness. You were born with wings. You are not meant for crawling, so don't. You have wings. Learn to use them and fly.

You think because you understand 'one' you must also understand 'two', because one and one make two. But you must also understand 'and'.

The moon stays bright when it doesn't avoid the night.

Like a sculptor, if necessary, carve a friend out of stone. Realize that your inner sight is blind and try to see a treasure in everyone.

Beauty surrounds us.

I choose to love you in silence… For in silence I find no rejection, I choose to love you in loneliness… For in loneliness no one owns you but me, I choose to adore you from a distance… For distance will shield me from pain, I choose to kiss you in the wind… For the wind is gentler than my lips, I choose to hold you in my dreams… For in my dreams, you have no end.

God turns you from one feeling to another and teaches by means of opposites so that you will have two wings to fly, not one

At night, I open the window and ask the moon to come and press its face against mine. Breathe into me. Close the language-door and open the love-window. The moon won't use the door, only the window.

Here is a relationship booster that is guaranteed to work: Every time your spouse or lover says something stupid make your eyes light up as if you just heard something brilliant.

Moonlight floods the whole sky from horizon to horizon; How much it can fill your room depends on its windows.

Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy, absentminded. Someone sober will worry about things going badly. Let the lover be.

Inside you there’s an artist you don’t know about… say yes quickly, if you know, if you’ve known it from before the beginning of the universe.

Your hand opens and closes, opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralysed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birds' wings.

You try to be faithful And sometimes you're cruel. You are mine. Then, you leave. Without you, I can't cope. And when you take the lead, I become your footstep. Your absence leaves a void. Without you, I can't cope. You have disturbed my sleep, You have wrecked my image. You have set me apart. Without you, I can't cope.

An eye is meant to see things. The soul is here for its own joy. A head has one use: For loving a true love. Feet: To chase after. Love is for vanishing into the sky. The mind, for learning what men have done and tried to do. Mysteries are not to be solved: The eye goes blind when it only wants to see why. A lover is always accused of something. But when he finds his love, whatever was lost in the looking comes back completely changed.

I look at the blanked-out faces of the other passengers--hoisting their briefcases, their backpacks, shuffling to disembark--and I think of what Hobie said: beauty alters the grain of reality. And I keep thinking too of the more conventional wisdom: namely, that the pursuit of pure beauty is a trap, a fast track to bitterness and sorrow, that beauty has to be wedded to something more meaningful. Only what is that thing? Why am I made the way I am? Why do I care about all the wrong things, and nothing at all for the right ones? Or, to tip it another way: how can I see so clearly that everything I love or care about is illusion, and yet--for me, anyway--all that's worth living for lies in that charm? A great sorrow, and one that I am only beginning to understand: we don't get to choose our own hearts. We can't make ourselves want what's good for us or what's good for other people. We don't get to choose the people we are. Because--isn't it drilled into us constantly, from childhood on, an unquestioned platitude in the culture--? From William Blake to Lady Gaga, from Rousseau to Rumi to Tosca to Mister Rogers, it's a curiously uniform message, accepted from high to low: when in doubt, what to do? How do we know what's right for us? Every shrink, every career counselor, every Disney princess knows the answer: "Be yourself." "Follow your heart." Only here's what I really, really want someone to explain to me. What if one happens to be possessed of a heart that can't be trusted--? What if the heart, for its own unfathomable reasons, leads one willfully and in a cloud of unspeakable radiance away from health, domesticity, civic responsibility and strong social connections and all the blandly-held common virtues and instead straight toward a beautiful flare of ruin, self-immolation, disaster?...If your deepest self is singing and coaxing you straight toward the bonfire, is it better to turn away? Stop your ears with wax? Ignore all the perverse glory your heart is screaming at you? Set yourself on the course that will lead you dutifully towards the norm, reasonable hours and regular medical check-ups, stable relationships and steady career advancement the New York Times and brunch on Sunday, all with the promise of being somehow a better person? Or...is it better to throw yourself head first and laughing into the holy rage calling your name?