Thought-provoking Rumi Quotes
Rumi was a Persian poet who lived in the 13th century.
His spiritual lyrics and spiritual couplets have widely influenced literature and thought in the Muslim world and beyond.
We hope you enjoy this collection of inspirational Rumi quotes.
15 Best Rumi Quotes
1.) The wound is the place where the light enters you.
2.) If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?
3.) It’s your road and yours alone. Others may walk it with you, but no one can walk it for you.
4.) Appear as you are. Be as you appear.
5.) Silence gives answers.
6.) The moon stays bright when it doesn’t avoid the night.
7.) The lamps are different, but the light is the same.
8.) When you let go of who you are, you become who you might be.
9.) Let go of your mind and then be mindful. Close your ears and listen.
10.) All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.
11.) Whenever they rebuild an old building, they must, first of all, destroy the old one.
12.) Looking up gives light, although at first, it makes you dizzy.
13.) Be an empty page, untouched by words.
14.) The world is a mountain in which your words are echoed back to you.
15.) Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.
Good Rumi Quotations
Poetry can be dangerous, especially beautiful poetry, because it gives the illusion of having had the experience without actually going through it.
I am weary of personal worrying and in love with the art of madness.
Dance when you’re broken open. Dance if you’ve torn the bandage off. (And) Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you’re perfectly free.
My soul is from elsewhere, I’m sure of that, and I intend to end up there.
Start a huge, foolish project, like Noah… it makes absolutely no difference what people think of you.
There’s a field somewhere beyond all doubt and wrongdoing. I’ll meet you there.
People of the world don’t look at themselves, and so they blame one another.
Your hand opens and closes, opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralyzed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birds’ wings.
This poetry. I never know what I’m going to say.
Everything that is made beautiful and fair and lovely is made for the eye of one who sees.
You think because you understand ‘one’ you must also understand ‘two’ because one and one make two. But you must also understand ‘and’.
Short Rumi Quotes
What you seek is seeking you.
Your depression is connected to your insolence and refusal to praise.
Close your eyes, fall in love, and stay there.
Beauty surrounds us.
Your heart is the size of an ocean. Go find yourself in its hidden depths.
Do not believe in an absurdity no matter who says it.
Within tears, find hidden laughter.
You had better run from me. My words are fire.
Work. Keep digging your well. Water is there somewhere.
There are lovers content with longing. I’m not one of them.
The woman is the light of God.
There is a voice that doesn’t use words, listen.
Sit, be still, and listen.
Good Insights
Look at the moon in the sky, not the one in the lake.
The lion is most handsome when looking for food.
To praise the sun is to praise your own eyes.
We come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust.
Let silence be the art you practice.
I found myself.
Those who don’t want to change, let them sleep.
Ignore those that make you fearful and sad.
With every breath, I plant the seeds of devotion, I am a farmer of the heart.
If light is in your heart, you will find your way home.
Patience is the key to joy.
Only from the heart can you touch the sky.
I closed my mouth and spoke to you in a hundred silent ways.
Suffering is a gift. In it is hidden mercy.
The art of knowing is knowing what to ignore.
What hurts you blesses you. Darkness is your candle.
The source of now is here.
Conventional opinion is the ruin of our souls.
Move, but don’t move the way fear makes you move.
Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes around in another form.
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Funny Quotes
Beauty surrounds us, but usually, we need to be walking in a garden to know it.
Gratitude is the wine for the soul. Go on. Get drunk.
Love sometimes wants to do us a great favor: hold us upside down and shake all the nonsense out.
Either give me more wine or leave me alone.
I lost my hat while gazing at the moon, and then I lost my mind.
Inspirational Sayings
Do not feel lonely, the entire universe is inside you.
Everything in the universe is within you. Ask all from yourself.
Everything that is made beautiful and fair and lovely is made for the eye of one who sees.
Patience with small details makes perfect a large work, like the universe.
Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open?
Don’t you know yet? It is your light that lights 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.
Be a lamp, a lifeboat, or a ladder. Help someone’s soul heal. Walk out of your house like a shepherd.
Don’t be satisfied with stories and how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.
Whether one moves slowly or with speed, the one who is a seeker will be a finder.
Why are you so enchanted by this world when a mine of gold lies within you?
Anyone who genuinely and consistently with both hands looks for something will find it.
The garden of the world has no limit except in your mind.
Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.
Remember, the entrance door to the sanctuary is inside you.
In each moment the fire rages, it will burn away a hundred veils. And carry you a thousand steps toward your goal.
Interesting Takes
There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the ground; there are a thousand ways to go home again.
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.
Silence is the language of god, all else is poor translation.
There are two who are never satisfied — the lover of the world and the lover of knowledge.
Everyone has been made for some particular work, and the desire for that work has been put in every heart.
All your anxiety is because of your desire for harmony. Seek disharmony, then you will gain peace.
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.
All people on the planet are children, except for a very few. No one is grown up except those free of desire.
The truth was a mirror in the hands of God. It fell and broke into pieces. Everybody took a piece of it, and they looked at it and thought they had the truth.
Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.
Maybe you are searching among the branches for what only appears in the roots.
Quotes About Life
God has given us a dark wine so potent that, drinking it, we leave the two worlds.
You were born with wings; why prefer to crawl through life?
Live life as if everything is rigged in your favor.
Travel brings power and love back into your life.
This place is a dream. Only a sleeper considers it real. Then death comes like dawn, and you wake up laughing at what you thought was your grief.
Life is a balance of holding on and letting go.
Wear gratitude like a cloak and it will feed every corner of your life.
The very center of your heart is where life begins – the most beautiful place on earth.
Try not to resist the changes that come your way. Instead, let life live through you. And do not worry that your life is turning upside down. How do you know that the side you are used to is better than the one to come?
There is a force within that gives you life. Seek that.
Love comes with a knife, not some shy question, and not with fears for its reputation!
Set your life on fire. Seek those who fan your flames.
Love Quotes
Be drunk with love, for love is all that exists.
Would you become a pilgrim on the road of love? The first condition is that you make yourself humble as dust and ashes.
Whatever happens, just keep smiling and lose yourself in love.
Lovers have heartaches that can’t be cured by drugs or sleep or games, but only by seeing their beloved.
The only lasting beauty is the beauty of the heart.
Let your teacher be love itself.
Be soulful. Be kind. (And) Be in love.
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.
A thousand half-loves must be forsaken to take one whole heart home.
Let yourself be drawn by the stronger pull of that which you truly love.
Be certain that in the religion of love, there are no believers and unbelievers. Love embraces all.
Whoever has the heart’s doors wide open could see the sun itself in every atom.
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.
Words are a pretext. It is the inner bond that draws one person to another, not words.
Your task is not to seek love but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.
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.
Laugh as much as you breathe. Love as long as you live.
Motivational Quotations from Rumi
Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.
As you start to walk, the way appears.
You’ve seen my descent. Now watch my rising.
I know you’re tired but come, this is the way.
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. (And) It pulls up the rotten roots so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow.
What matters is how quickly you do what your soul directs.
Shine like the whole universe is yours.
Your heart knows the way; run in that direction.
Why should I be unhappy? Every parcel of my being is in full bloom.
Not only do the thirsty seek the water, the water as well seeks the thirsty.
The universe is not outside of you. Look inside yourself; everything that you want, you already are.
The universe and the light of the stars come through me.
Try something different. Surrender.
You are not one; you are a thousand. Just light your lantern.
Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure.
In the house of lovers, the music never stops, the walls are made of songs & the floor dances.
Famous Rumi Quotes
Raise your words, not voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.
I am not this hair, I am not this skin, I am the soul that lives within.
There is a secret medicine given only to those who hurt so hard they can’t hope. The hopers would feel slighted if they knew.
Know that one day, your pain will become your cure.
The rose’s rarest essence lives in the thorns.
Gamble everything for love if you’re a true human being.
Listen with ears of tolerance! See through the eyes of compassion! Speak with the language of love.
You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.
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.
In silence, there is eloquence. Stop weaving and see how the pattern improves.
Actually, your soul and mine are the same; we appear and disappear in each other.
Be full of sorrow, that you may become a hill of joy; weep, that you may break into laughter.
Anything which is more than our necessity is poison. It may be power, wealth, hunger, ego, greed, laziness, love, ambition, or hate.
Positive Quotes
If the foot of the trees were not tied to the earth, they would be pursuing me. For I have blossomed so much, I am the envy of the gardens.
Inside you, there’s an artist you don’t know about.
Achieve some perfection yourself so that you may not fall into sorrow by seeing the perfection in others.
Very little grows on jagged rock. Be ground. Be crumbled, so wildflowers will come up where you are.
I want to sing like the birds’ sing, not worrying about who hears or what they think.
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.
I want to be where your bare foot walks because maybe before you step, you’ll look at the ground. I want that blessing.
Give your weakness to one who helps.
I once had a thousand desires. But in my one desire to know you, all else melted away.
The morning wind spreads its fresh smell. We must get up and take that in, that wind that lets us live. Breathe before it’s gone.
Look past your thoughts, so you may drink the pure nectar of This Moment.
Spiritual Insights
When the world pushes you to your knees, you’re in the perfect position to pray.
Respond to every call that excites your spirit.
When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.
My soul is my guide.
There is a life force within your soul; seek that life. There is a gem in the mountain of your body; seek that mine. O traveler, if you are in search of that, don’t look outside; look inside yourself and seek that.
The soul has been given its own ears to hear things the mind does not understand.
Knock. And he’ll open the door.
Whenever you are alone, remind yourself that God has sent everyone else away so that there is only you and Him.
The Prophets accept all agony and trust it. For the water has never feared the fire.
The fault is in the blamer. Spirit sees nothing to criticize.
And so it is that both the devil and the angelic spirits present us with objects of desire to awaken our power of choice.
What is planted in each person’s soul will sprout.
Quotes to Learn From
Be grateful for whoever comes because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.
Half-heartedness doesn’t reach into majesty.
Be like the sun for grace and mercy. Be like the night to cover others’ faults. (And) Be like running water for generosity. Be like death for rage and anger. Be like the Earth for modesty.
Ignore those that make you fearful and sad, that degrade you back towards disease and death.
Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment. Cleverness is mere opinion. Bewilderment brings intuitive knowledge.
They say there is a doorway from heart to heart, but what is the use of a door when there are no walls?
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don’t go back to sleep.
When you feel a peaceful joy, that’s when you are near the truth.
Moonlight floods the whole sky from horizon to horizon; How much it can fill your room depends on its windows.
Seek the wisdom that will untie your knot. Seek the path that demands your whole being.
The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear.
These pains you feel are messengers. Listen to them.
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.
Poetic Quotes By Rumi
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and right-doing, 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.
Be with those who mix with God
as honey blends with milk and say,
“Anything that comes and goes,
rises and sets, is not
what I love.” else you’ll be like a caravan fire left
to flare itself out alone beside the road.
Beating your wings and feathers,
you broke free from this cage.
Rising up to the sky,
you attained the world of the soul.
You were a prized falcon trapped by an Old Woman.
Then you heard the drummer’s call
and flew beyond space and time.
O Love, O pure deep Love, be here, be now,
Be all – worlds dissolve into your stainless endless radiance,
Frail living leaves burn with your brighter-than-cold stares
Make me your servant, your breath, your core.
Remember God so much that you are forgotten.
Let the caller and the called disappear;
be lost in the Call.
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.
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.
Other Names for Rumi
Rumi’s poetry books have sold millions of copies. Here are some of the names that Rumi is known by.
1.) Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī
2.) Mevlânâ/Mawlānā
3.) Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Balkhī
4.) Mevlevî/Mawlawī
By Sara Sinclair
Sara writes about quotes, poetry, and literature.
You are on our Thought-provoking Rumi Quotes page.
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