Rumi Quotes

347 Sourced Quotes

Discipline enabled Heaven to be filled with light; discipline enabled the angels to be immaculate and holy.

Rumi
Your legs will get heavy and tired. Then comes a moment of feeling the wings you've grown, lifting.

Rumi
You've come to know the fortunate and the inauspicious stars, but you don't know whether you yourself are fortunate or lucky.

Rumi
Last night you left me and slept your own deep sleep. Tonight you turn and turn. I say, 'You and I will be together till the Universe dissolves.' You mumble back things you thought of when you were drunk.

Rumi
Listen to presences inside poems,
Let them take you where they will.
Follow those private hints,
and never leave the premises.

Rumi
When you reach the bottom of the well of your own nature, then you will know that the vileness was from yourself.

Rumi
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.

Rumi
Knowledge that is acquired is not like this. Those who have it worry if audiences like it or not. It's a bait for popularity. Disputational knowing wants customers. It has no soul... The only real customer is God. Chew quietly your sweet sugarcane God-Love, and stay playfully childish.

Rumi
Soul receives from soul that knowledge, therefore not by book nor from tongue. If knowledge of mysteries come after emptiness of mind, that is illumination of heart.

Rumi
Learn from Ali how to fight
without your ego participating.
God's lion did nothing
that didn't originate
from his deep center.

Rumi
The garden of love is green without limit and yields many fruits other than sorrow or joy. Love is beyond either condition: without spring, without autumn, it is always fresh.

Rumi
"There's no courage", The Prophet said, "before the war has begun."
Drunkards vaunt their bravery when you speak of war.
But in the blaze of battle they scatter like mice.
I'm astonished by the man who wants purity
And yet trembles when the harshness of polishing begin...
When a man beats a carpet again and again
It's not the carpet he's attacking, but the dirt in it.

Rumi
This is what love does and continues to do. It tastes like honey to adults and milk to children.

Rumi
When you have indulged a lust, your wing drops off; you become lame, abandoned by a fantasy. …People fancy they are enjoying themselves, but they are really tearing out their wings for the sake of an illusion.

Rumi
Do you pay regular visits to yourself? Don't argue or answer rationally. Let us die, and dying, reply.

Rumi
Everything that is made beautiful and fair and lovely is made for the eye of one who sees.

Rumi
The lion who breaks the enemy's ranks
is a minor hero
compared to the lion who overcomes himself.

Rumi
Your depression is connected to your insolence and refusal to praise. Whoever feels himself walking on the path, and refuses to praise—that man or woman steals from others every day—is a shoplifter! The sun became full of light when it got hold of itself. Angels only began shining when they achieved discipline. The sun goes out whenever the cloud of not-praising comes. The moment the foolish angel felt insolent, he heard the door close.

Rumi
If an ant seeks the rank of Solomon,
don't smile contemptuously upon its quest.
Everything you possess of skill, and wealth and handicraft,
wasn't it first merely a thought and a quest?

Rumi
We are the mirror, as well as the face in it.
We are tasting the taste of eternity this minute.
We are pain and what cures pain.
We are the sweet cold water and the jar that pours.
Soul of the world, no life, nor world remain,
no beautiful women and men longing.
Only this ancient love circling the holy black stone of nothing.
Where the lover is the loved, the horizon and everything within it.

Rumi
Silence
is an ocean. Speech is a river. When the ocean is searching for you, don't walk
into the language-river. Listen to the ocean,
and bring your talky business to an end Traditional words are just babbling
in that presence, and babbling is a substitute
for sight.

Rumi
There is a certain cloud,
impregnated with a
thousand lightnings.
There is my body,
in it an ocean formed of his glory,
all the creation,
all the universes,
all the galaxies,
are lost in it.

Rumi
Every tree and plant in the meadow seemed to be dancing, those which average eyes would see as fixed and still.

Rumi
The world's flattery and hypocrisy is a sweet morsel: eat less of it, for it is full of fire. Its fire is hidden while its taste is manifest, but its smoke becomes visible in the end.

Rumi
They try to say what you are, spiritual or sexual? They wonder about Solomon and all his wives. In the body of the world, they say, there is a soul and you are that. But we have ways within each other that will never be said by anyone.

Rumi
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.

Rumi
With life as short as a half-taken breath, don't plant anything but love.

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

Rumi
This is a gathering of Lovers.
In this gathering
there is no high, no low,
no smart, no ignorant,
no special assembly,
no grand discourse,
no proper schooling required.
There is no master,
no disciple.
This gathering is more like a drunken party,
full of tricksters, fools,
mad men and mad women.
This is a gathering of Lovers.

Rumi
Give up to grace. The ocean takes care of each wave 'til it gets to shore. You need more help than you know.

Rumi