Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi was a Persian poet, an Islamic dervish and a Sufi mystic. His discipline and wisdom have crossed all national and ethnic borders ever since the 13th century.
Almost everyone has heard or read some Rumi quotes on life at some point. Rumi is seen as a great spiritual master and poet. His work influenced and inspired many other artists, and kept many people sane up to this day.
Rumi was a jurist and religion teacher until the age of 37, when he met a wandering dervish named Shams Tabrizi. He soon became Rumi’s spiritual mentor and intimate friend and eventually changed the course of his life.
Their friendship lasted for about three years until Shams mysteriously disappeared. It is rumored that one of Rumi’s sons murdered him because he was jealous of their close relationship. Rumi was devastated by the loss of his beloved friend, but used his pain as inspiration for writing poems where Shams is mentioned with great reverence.
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Rumi’s poetry is a reflection on nature’s beauty, a song, a dance, an idea, a feeling… anything that makes us human, everything we’re able to see with our eyes open or shut. Below you will find a lot of Rumi love quotes that prove how spiritual and intense his poems are. He is among the poets that show us the importance of every experience, be it good or bad.
Rumi’s work continues to resonate and today, his tomb draws dervish followers and heads of state each year for a ceremony that marks the anniversary of his death. Rumi's thought-provoking and meaningful words are worth keeping in mind, and if you're in doubt, this collection of Rumi quotes will prove it.
The Most Inspiring Rumi Quotes
Anyone who’s read Rumi’s words will understand just how inspiring his messages can be. In just a few words, he was able to draw out powerful emotions and force his reader to think about life in the most meaningful way. Using simple analogies and in a direct yet somehow comforting way, he makes you realize the positive hidden inside the negative. The following Rumi quotes will inspire you to see the light where you think there’s only darkness.
If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?
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.
Do not feel lonely, the entire universe is inside you. Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion. Set your life on fire.
Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder. Help someone's soul heal. Walk out of your house like a shepherd.
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.
What you seek is seeking you.
Beauty surrounds us, but usually we need to be walking in a garden to know it.
Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.
Love sometimes wants to do us a great favor: hold us upside down and shake all the nonsense out.
You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.
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Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.
Whoever finds love beneath hurt and grief disappears into emptiness with a thousand new disguises.
You were born with wings, why prefer to crawl through life?
Be like a tree and let the dead leaves drop.
Don't be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.
Everything that is made beautiful and fair and lovely is made for the eye of one who sees.
The rose's rarest essence lives in the thorns.
Why should I be unhappy? Every parcel of my being is in full bloom.
Raise your words, not voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.
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?
Words are a pretext. It is the inner bond that draws one person to another, not words.
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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.
Set your life on fire. Seek those who fan your flames.
I know you're tired but come, this is the way.
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.
The wound is the place where the light enters you.
And so it is, that both the devil and the angelic spirits present us with objects of desire to awaken our power of choice.
Wherever you are, and whatever you do, be in love.
Start a huge, foolish project, like Noah…it makes absolutely no difference what people think of you.
Reason is powerless in the expression of love.
Wise Rumi Quotes About Love And Life
Rumi recognized that matters of the heart were often behind the majority of life’s hardships. Romantic or not, when your heart hurts, it’s hard to see clarity and light in anything. He drew inspiration from pain and used his words to help guide people in overcoming their struggles. These Rumi quotes about love and life will give you a glimpse into how powerful his words can be.
You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens.
These pains you feel are messengers. Listen to them.
Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy, absentminded. Someone sober will worry about things going badly. Let the lover be.
Your heart is the size of an ocean. Go find yourself in its hidden depths.
I want to sing like the birds sing, not worrying about who hears or what they think.
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.
When the world pushes you to your knees, you’re in the perfect position to pray.
Live life as if everything is rigged in your favor.
I am not this hair, I am not this skin, I am the soul that lives within.
Be full of sorrow, that you may become hill of joy; weep, that you may break into laughter.
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Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment. Cleverness is mere opinion. Bewilderment brings intuitive knowledge.
Be empty of worrying. Think of who created thought.
Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray.
The lion is most handsome when looking for food.
The very center of your heart is where life begins – the most beautiful place on earth.
Don’t you know yet? It is your light that lights the worlds.
Love is the bridge between you and everything.
Seek the wisdom that will untie your knot. Seek the path that demands your whole being.
To praise the sun is to praise your own eyes.
Dance until you shatter yourself.
It’s your road, and yours alone, others may walk it with you, but no one can walk it for you.
Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open.
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As you start to walk on the way, the way appears.
Very little grows on jagged rock. Be ground. Be crumbled, so wild flowers will come up where you are.
What hurts you, blesses you. Darkness is your candle.
The only lasting beauty is the beauty of the heart.
The universe is not outside of you. Look inside yourself; everything that you want, you already are.
Close your eyes, fall in love, stay there.
If light is in your heart, you will find your way home.
Achieve some perfection yourself, so that you may not fall into sorrow by seeing the perfection in others.
This is a subtle truth. Whatever you love you are.
Forget safety. Live where you fear to live.
What is planted in each person’s soul will sprout.
In each moment the fire rages, it will burn away a hundred veils. And carry you a thousand steps toward your goal.
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