Rumī > Rumī's Quotes

“It is customary to blame secular science and anti-religious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society. It would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats. Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion--its message becomes meaningless.”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Don’t walk in front of me… I may not follow
Don’t walk behind me… I may not lead
Walk beside me… just be my friend”
― Albert Camus

“A man's heart is a wretched, wretched thing. It isn't like a mother's womb. It won't bleed. It won't stretch to make room for you.”
― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
― Oscar Wilde

“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.”
― Rumi

“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
― Rumi

“If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?”
― Rumi

“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.”
― Rumi

“silence is the language of god,
all else is poor translation.”
― Rumi

“He was pointing at the moon, but I was looking at his hand.”
― Richard Siken

“You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and he won’t tell you that he loves you, but he loves you. And you feel like you’ve done something terrible, like robbed a liquor store, or swallowed pills, or shoveled yourself a grave in the dirt, and you’re tired. You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and you’re trying not to tell him that you love him, and you’re trying to choke down the feeling, and you’re trembling, but he reaches over and he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your heart taking root in your body, like you’ve discovered something you didn’t even have a name for.”
― richard siken

“Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.
These, our bodies, possessed by light.
Tell me we'll never get used to it.”
― Richard Siken, Crush

“Faith is not the clinging to a shrine but an endless pilgrimage of the heart.”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel

“A prophet's true greatness is his ability to hold God and man in a single thought.”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Prophets

“Short is the way from need to greed.”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Insecurity of Freedom: Essays on Human Existence

“When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion—its message becomes meaningless.”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism

“Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion—its message becomes meaningless.”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism

“Criticism of religion must extend not only to its basic claims but to all of its statements. Religion is liable to distortion from without and to corruption from within. Since it frequently absorbs ideas not indigenous to its spirit, it is necessary to distinguish between the authentic and the spurious. Furthermore, superstition, pride, self-righteousness, bias, and vulgarity, may defile the finest traditions. Faith in its zeal tends to become bigotry. The criticism of reason, the challenge, and the doubts of the unbeliever may, therefore, be more helpful to the integrity of faith than the simple reliance on one's own faith.”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism

“Ask for work. If they don't give you work, ask for bread. If they do not give you work or bread, then take bread.”
― Emma Goldman, Anarchism and Other Essays

“But the second reason overshadowed the first, as the present overshadows the past, especially if it is an astonishing, urgent present in which each minute counts”
― César Aira

“In the absence of significant others, I had the liberating feeling of being absent from myself.”
― César Aira, The Divorce