“You are not a drop in the ocean. You are an entire ocean, in a drop.” Persian poet Rumi said this in one of his poems eight centuries ago, and these words still hold true today. In fact, many psychologists base entire programs on the scientific interpretation of this quote.
Rumi is usually known as a poet but actually was much more than that. Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi was born in the territory of modern Afghanistan, but his creative and philosophical work and its influence on literature and culture goes beyond one particular nation or language.
Being a scholar and a Sufi mystic, he reflected his deep knowledge of the spiritual world in his poems that have been translated into various languages. Some people think that Rumi poems are just romantic expressions of his feelings. But if you go a little deeper, you will realize they reflect immortal wisdom. Quotes by Rumi about life will have you ponder the value of things we usually don’t pay attention to.
Did you know that Rumi is often described as “the most popular” and “best selling” poet in the United States? Even if you haven’t read his full works, you have probably still heard quotes by Rumi in other places. Whether you look up “Rumi love quotes” or what Rumi said on death, it will likely change your perspective if you look just beyond the surface.
It is practically impossible to say which the best Rumi quotes are out of the vast sea of scholastic concepts he left for us, wrapped in the form of vivid metaphors and poetic descriptions. But it is safe to assume that whatever situation you’re currently experiencing in your life, Rumi will have a piece of profound advice for you.
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“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”
“It’s your road, and yours alone, others may walk it with you, but no one can walk it for you.”
“I want to sing like the birds sing, not worrying about who hears or what they think.”
“I am not this hair, I am not this skin, I am the soul that lives within.”
Reminds me of when Whitman says, "I...am not contain'd between my hat and boots..." The Transcendentalists must have read Rumi; I know they were influenced by Asian philosophy, but the connections are very cIear in some of these quotes.
“The universe is not outside of you. Look inside yourself; everything that you want, you already are.”
“Whenever we manage to love without expectations, calculations, negotiations, we are indeed in heaven.”
“Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy, absentminded. Someone sober will worry about things going badly. Let the lover be.”
“Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray.”
“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 sometimes wants to do us a great favor: hold us upside down and shake all the nonsense out.”
“Take someone who doesn’t keep score, who’s not looking to be richer, or afraid of losing, who has not the slightest interest even in his own personality: he’s free.”
“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.”
“Be like the sun for grace and mercy. Be like the night to cover others' faults. Be like running water for generosity. Be like death for rage and anger. Be like the Earth for modesty. Appear as you are. Be as you appear.”
“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.”
“Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment. Cleverness is mere opinion. Bewilderment brings intuitive knowledge.”
“Be certain that in the religion of Love there are no believers and unbelievers. LOVE embraces all.”
“Lovers find secret places inside this violent world where they make transactions with beauty.”
“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. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in.”
“I choose to love you in silence…
For in silence I find no rejection,
I choose to love you in loneliness…
For in loneliness no one owns you but me,
I choose to adore you from a distance…
For distance will shield me from pain,
I choose to kiss you in the wind…
For the wind is gentler than my lips,
I choose to hold you in my dreams…
For in my dreams, you have no end.”
"I have been a seeker and I still am, but I stopped asking the books and the stars. I started listening to the teaching of my soul."
“There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the ground; there are a thousand ways to go home again.”
“Ignore those that make you fearful and sad, that degrade you back towards disease and death.”
“There is a candle in your heart, ready to be kindled. There is a void in your soul, ready to be filled. You feel it, don’t you?”
“Be full of sorrow, that you may become a hill of joy; weep, that you may break into laughter.”
“In each moment the fire rages, it will burn away a hundred veils. And carry you a thousand steps toward your goal.”
“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.”
“I was dead, then alive. Weeping, then laughing. The power of love came into me, and I became fierce like a lion, then tender like the evening star.”
“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. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place.”
“Come, come, whoever you are. Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving. It doesn't matter. Ours is not a caravan of despair. Come, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times. Come, yet again, come, come.”
“Two there are who are never satisfied - the lover of the world and the lover of knowledge.”
"The spirit is so near that you can’t see it! But reach for it… Don’t be a jar full of water, whose rim is always dry. Don’t be the rider who gallops all night and never sees the horse that is beneath him."
“Would you become a pilgrim on the road of love? The first condition is that you make yourself humble as dust and ashes.”
“Everything that is made beautiful and fair and lovely is made for the eye of one who sees.”
“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.”
“And so it is, that both the devil and the angelic spirits present us with objects of desire to awaken our power of choice.”
“Achieve some perfection yourself, so that you may not fall into sorrow by seeing the perfection in others.”
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing 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.”
“On the path of love we are neither masters nor the owners of our lives. We are only a brush in the hand of the master painter.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
