Rumi > Quotes

“Anyone who knows me, should learn to know me again;
For I am like the Moon,
you will see me with new face everyday.”
― Rumi

“I, you, he, she, we
In the garden of mystic lovers,
these are not true distinctions.”
― Rumi

“Do not leave me,
hide in my heart like a secret,
wind around my head like a turban.
"I come and go as I please,"
you say, "swift as a heartbeat."
You can tease me as much as you like
but never leave me.”
― Rumi

“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.”
― Rumi

“You are a lover of your own experience ... not of me ... you turn to me to feel ur own emotion”
― Rumi, مثنوی معنوی

“I closed my mouth and spoke to you in a hundred silent ways.”
― Rumi

“This poetry. I never know what I'm going to say.”
― Rumi

“The way of love is not
a subtle argument.

The door there
is devastation.

Birds make great sky-circles
of their freedom.
How do they learn it?

They fall, and falling,
they're given wings.”
― Rumi

“Love calls - everywhere and always.
We're sky bound.
Are you coming?”
― Rumi

“Love is the cure,
for your pain will keep giving birth to more pain
until your eyes constantly exhale love as effortlessly as your body yields its scent.”
― Rumi

“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.”
― Rumi

“I searched for God among the Christians and on the Cross and therein I found Him not.
I went into the ancient temples of idolatry; no trace of Him was there.
I entered the mountain cave of Hira and then went as far as Qandhar but God I found not.
With set purpose I fared to the summit of Mount Caucasus and found there only 'anqa's habitation.
Then I directed my search to the Kaaba, the resort of old and young; God was not there even.
Turning to philosophy I inquired about him from ibn Sina but found Him not within his range.
I fared then to the scene of the Prophet's experience of a great divine manifestation only a "two bow-lengths' distance from him" but God was not there even in that exalted court.
Finally, I looked into my own heart and there I saw Him; He was nowhere else.”
― Rumi

“For without you, I swear, the town
Has become like a prison to me.
Distraction and the mountain
And the desert, all I desire.”
― Rumi, Love: The Joy That Wounds: The Love Poems of Rumi

“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.”
― Rumi, Hush, Don't Say Anything to God: Passionate Poems of Rumi

“Moonlight floods the whole sky from horizon to horizon;
How much it can fill your room depends on its windows.”
― Rumi, Essential Rumi

“I am weary of personal worrying,
in love with the art of madness.”
― Rumi

“You are the Truth from foot to brow. Now, what else would you like to know?”
― Rumi

“If the foot of the trees were not tied to earth, they would be pursuing me.. For I have blossomed so much, I am the envy of the gardens.”
― Rumi

“You are so weak. Give up to grace.
The ocean takes care of each wave till it gets to shore.
You need more help than you know.”
― Rumi, The Essential Rumi

“Something opens our wings. Something makes boredom and hurt disappear. Someone fills the cup in front of us: We taste only sacredness.”
― Rumi

“If in the darkness of ignorance, you don’t recognize a person’s true nature, look to see whom he has chosen for his leader.”
― Rumi, مثنوی معنوی

“You and I have spoken all these words, but for the way we have to go,words are no preparation. I have one small drop of knowing in my soul. Let it dissolve in your ocean”
― Rumi

“If the wine drinker
has a deep gentleness in him,
he will show that when drunk.
But if he has hidden anger and arrogance,
those appear.”
― Rumi

“A Thirsty Fish

I don't get tired of you. Don't grow weary
of being compassionate toward me!

All this thirst equipment
must surely be tired of me,
the waterjar, the water carrier.

I have a thirsty fish in me
that can never find enough
of what it's thirsty for!

Show me the way to the ocean!
Break these half-measures,
these small containers.

All this fantasy
and grief.

Let my house be drowned in the wave
that rose last night in the courtyard
hidden in the center of my chest.

Joseph fell like the moon into my well.
The harvest I expected was washed away.
But no matter.

A fire has risen above my tombstone hat.
I don't want learning, or dignity,
or respectability.

I want this music and this dawn
and the warmth of your cheek against mine.

The grief-armies assemble,
but I'm not going with them.

This is how it always is
when I finish a poem.

A great silence comes over me,
and I wonder why I ever thought
to use language.”
― Rumi

“To live without you
is to be robbed of love
and what is life without it?
To live without you
is death to me, my love
but some call it life.”
― Rumi

“Out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing, there is a field. I will meet you there.”
― Rumi

“Oh sky, without me, do not change,
Oh moon, without me, do not shine;
Oh earth, without me, do not grow,
Oh time, without me, do not go.

...Oh, you cannot go, without me.”
― Rumi, Love: The Joy That Wounds: The Love Poems of Rumi

“You think you are alive
because you breathe air?
Shame on you,
that you are alive in such a limited way.
Don't be without Love,
so you won't feel dead.
Die in Love
and stay alive forever.”
― Rumi

“Poems are rough notations for the music we are.”
― Rumi

“In the slaughterhouse of love, they kill only the best, none of the weak or deformed. Don't run away from this dying. Whoever's not killed for love is dead meat.”
― Rumi