The original Persian language was so influential that a network of institutions was established to study it during the Ottoman Empire. As new translations are printed and his work continues to resonate, Rumi’s influence will live on. His inspiring words remind us how poetry has become an integral part of our daily lives. Here are some compilations of Rumi Quotes.
Short Biography about Rumi
Maulana Jalaluddin Balkhi, known as Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Balkhi in Persia and Rumi in the West, was born on September 30, 1207 AD. In the Balkh province of Afghanistan in the eastern part of the Persian Empire. The Sufi mystic Jalal ad-Din Rumi was born in Jalal ad-Din Mohammad-i Balkhi, on the outskirts of the Persian Empire, in what is now Balkh, Afghanistan (although another birthplace was also established in Tajikistan).
Rumi, full name Jalal al-Din Rumi, also known as the honorary title of Mawlan (born around 30 September 1207, Balkh [now in Afghanistan] – died 17 December 1273 in Konya [now in Turkey]), The greatest Sufi mystic and Persian poet, known for his textual and didactic epic Masnavi-Yi Manavi (“Spiritual Couplets”), which had a huge influence on mystical thought and literature throughout the Muslim world.
Rumi followed Husam al-Din’s advice and composed some 26,000 Masnavi verses in later years. Husam al-Din asked him to follow the pattern of the poet’s Attar and Sanai, who expounded mystical teachings in long verse interspersed with anecdotes, fables, stories, proverbs, and allegories.
As Edward J. Brown noted, the three most prominent Persian mystic poets Rumi, Sanai and Attar were Sunni Muslims, and their poetry is replete with praises of the first two caliphs Abu Bakr and Umar ibn al-Khattab. Rumi described the Masnavi as “the roots of the roots of the (Islamic) religion”, and some Sufis considered the text to be the Qur’an in Persian.
Top 10 Rumi quotes
“We carry inside us the wonders we seek outside us.”
“Swim out of your little pond.”
“Let the waters settle and you will see the moon and the stars mirrored in your own being.”
“Raise your words, not voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.”
“You were born with wings, why prefer to crawl through life?”
“Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.”
“Ignore those that make you fearful and sad, that degrade you back towards disease and death.”
“Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.”
“When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.”
“Everything in the universe is within you. Ask all from yourself.”
“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.”
“Set your life on fire. Seek those who fan your flames”
“Suffering is a gift. In it is hidden mercy.”
“There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the ground; there are a thousand ways to go home again.”
“Peaceful is the one who is not concerned with having more or less.”
“If you could leave your selfishness, you would see how you’ve been torturing your soul.”
“The cure for pain is in the pain.”
“What hurts you, blesses you. Darkness is your candle.”
“These pains you feel are messengers. Listen to them.”
“You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.”
“You wander from room to room, hunting for the diamond necklace that is already around your neck!”
“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.”
“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.”
“Don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.”
“Why do you stay in prison, when the door is so wide open?”
“Know then that the body is merely a garment. Go seek the wearer, not the cloak.”
“Burdens are the foundations of ease and bitter things the forerunners of pleasure.”
“When you feel a peaceful joy, that’s when you are near truth.”
“The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don’t go back to sleep.”
“Within tears, find hidden laughter, Seek treasures amid ruins, sincere one. ”
“Give up to grace. The ocean takes care of each wave ’til it gets to shore. You need more help than you know.”
“Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes around in another form.”
Best Rumi love quotes
“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.”
“Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.”
“Let yourself be drawn by the stronger pull of that which you truly love.”
“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.”
“Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.”
“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.”
“You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens.”
“Only from the heart can you touch the sky.”
“Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy, absentminded. Someone sober will worry about things going badly. Let the lover be. ”
“Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.”
“Everyone has been made for some particular work, and the desire for that work has been put in every heart.”
“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.”
“Love is the whole thing. We are only pieces.”
“Love is the bridge between you and everything.”
“Since Love has made ruins of my heart, The sun must come and illumine them. Such generosity has broken me with shame.”
“The heart has its own language. The heart knows a hundred thousand ways to speak.”
“Love said to me, there is nothing that is not me. Be silent.”
“We love that s why life is full of so many wonderful gifts.”
Rumi quotes on life
“Travel brings power and love back into your life.”
“I once had a thousand desires. But in my one desire to know you all else melted away.”
“Gamble everything for love, if you’re a true human being.”
“Maybe you are searching among the branches, for what only appears in the roots.”
“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.”
“What matters is how quickly you do what your soul directs.”
“Whoever’s calm and sensible is insane!”
“Let silence take you to the core of life.”
“The only lasting beauty is the beauty of the heart”
“At the end of my life, with just one breath left, if you come, I’ll sit up and sing.”
“Listen with ears of tolerance! See through the eyes of compassion! Speak with the language of love”
“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.”
“The garden of the world has no limits, except in your mind.”
“Don’t wait any longer. Dive in the ocean, Leave and let the sea be you.”
“Someone who does not run toward the allure of love walks a road where nothing lives. But this dove here senses the love hawk floating above, and waits, and will not be driven or scared to safety.”
“There is a voice that doesn’t use words. Listen.”
“When the light returns to its source, it takes nothing of what it has illuminated.”
“Let go of your mind and then be mindful.
Close your ears and listen!”
“Keep your intelligence white hot and your grief glistening“
so your life will stay fresh.”
Some more Deep Rumi quotes on life
“As you live Deeper in the Heart, the Mirror gets clearer and cleaner.”
“Look carefully around you and recognize the luminosity of souls. Sit beside those who draw you to that.”
“Peaceful is the one who’s not concerned with having more or less.
Unbound by name and fame, he is free from sorrow from the world and mostly from himself.”
“Don’t turn away. Keep your gaze on the bandaged place. That’s where the light enters you.”
“A pen went scribbling along. When it tried to write love, it broke.”
The Book of Love: Poems of Ecstasy and Longing
“Your heart is the size of an ocean. Go find yourself in its hidden depths.”
“Sometimes you hear a voice through the door calling you… This turning toward what you deeply love saves you.”
“Body is not veiled from soul, neither soul from body, Yet no man hath ever seen a soul.”
“Look at the moon in the sky, not the one in the lake.”
“The middle path is the way to wisdom”
“Do not seek water, get thirst.”
“There is a moon inside every human being. Learn to be companions with it.”
“With life as short as a half taken breath, don’t plant anything but love.”
“people want you to be happy, don’t keep serving them your pain”
“Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond”
“The waterwheel accepts water and turns and gives it away, weeping.”
“Live life as if everything is rigged in your favor.”
“The desire to know your own soul will end all other desires.”
“Silence is an ocean. Speech is a river. When the ocean is searching for you, don’t walk into the river. Listen to the ocean.”
“Wherever you stand, be the Soul of that place.”
“Life is a balance between holding on and letting go.”
“The inspiration you seek is already within you. Be silent and listen.”
“The deeper the grief, the more radiant the love.”
“It doesn’t matter that you’ve broken your vow a thousand times. Still come, and yet again, come.”
“Our greatest strength lies in the gentleness and tenderness of our hearth.”