The Essential Rumi Quotes

“Don't be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.”
― Rumi, The Essential Rumi

“Be empty of worrying.
Think of who created thought!

Why do you stay in prison
When the door is so wide open?”
― Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi, The Essential Rumi

“Be melting snow.
Wash yourself of yourself.”
― Rumi, The Essential Rumi

“Respond to every call
that excites your spirit.”
― Rumi, The Essential Rumi

“When you go through a hard period,
When everything seems to oppose you,
... When you feel you cannot even bear one more minute,
NEVER GIVE UP!
Because it is the time and place that the course will divert!”
― Rumi, The Essential Rumi

“These pains you feel are messengers. Listen to them.”
― Rumi, The Essential Rumi

“Your hand opens and closes, opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralysed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birds' wings.”
― Jelaluddin Rumi, The Essential Rumi

“God turns you from one feeling to another and teaches by means of opposites so that you will have two wings to fly, not one”
― Rumi, The Essential Rumi

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

“Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy, absentminded. Someone sober will worry about things going badly. Let the lover be.”
― Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi, The Essential Rumi

“There is a secret medicine given only to those who hurt so hard they can't hope.

The hopers would feel slighted if they knew.”
― Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi, The Essential Rumi

“I will be waiting here....
For your silence to break,
For your soul to shake,
For your love to wake!”
― Rumi, The Essential 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.”
― Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi, The Essential Rumi

“Drum sound rises on the air, its throb, my heart.

A voice inside the beat says, "I know you're tired, but come. This is the way.”
― Rumi, The Essential Rumi

“What matters is how quickly you do what your soul directs.”
― Rumi, The Essential Rumi

“Whoever's calm and sensible is insane!”
― Rumi, The Essential Rumi

“Soul, if you want to learn secrets,

your heart must forget about
shame
 and dignity.
You are God's lover,

yet you worry
what people
are saying.”
― Rumi, The Essential Rumi

“I don't want learning, or dignity, or respectability. I want this music, and this dawn, and the warmth of your cheek against mine.”
― Rumi, The Essential Rumi

“Gamble everything for love, if you are a true human being. If not, leave this gathering. Half-heartedness doesn’t reach into majesty.”
― Rumi, The Essential Rumi

“Don't try to steer the boat.
Don't open shop for yourself. Listen. Keep silent.
You are not God's mouthpiece. Try to be an ear,
And if you do speak, ask for explanations.”
― Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi, The Essential Rumi

“You have forgotten the One
who doesn't care about ownership,
who doesn't try to turn a profit
from every human exchange.”
― Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi, The Essential Rumi

“There is a basket of fresh bread on your head, yet you go door to door asking for crusts.”
― Rumi, The Essential Rumi

“The same wind that uproots trees
makes the grass shine.

The lordly wind loves the weakness
and the lowness of grasses.
Never brag of being strong.

The axe doesn't worry how thick the branches are.
It cuts them to pieces. But not the leaves.
It leaves the leaves alone.”
― Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi, The Essential Rumi

“There are thousands of wines
that can take over our minds.

Don't think all ecstasies
are the same!

Jesus was lost in his love for God.
His donkey was drunk with barley.”
― Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi, The Essential Rumi

“You're water. We're the millstone.
You're wind. We're dust blown up into shapes.
You're spirit. We're the opening and closing
of our hands. You're the clarity.
We're the language that tries to say it.
You're joy. We're all the different kinds of laughing.”
― Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi, The Essential Rumi

“There is a secret medicine given only to those who hurt so hard they can't hope.”
― Rumi, The Essential Rumi

“Brother, stand the pain.
Escape the poison of your impulses.
The sky will bow to your beauty, if you do.
Learn to light the candle. Rise with the sun.
Turn away from the cave of your sleeping.
That way a thorn expands to a rose.”
― Rumi, The Essential Rumi

“There's no one with intelligence in this town except that man over there playing with the children, the one riding the stick horse. He has keen, fiery insight and vast dignity like the night sky, but he conceals it in the madness of child's play.”
― Rumi, The Essential 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 these two insomnias!
And the difference between them.

The minute I heard my first love story
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.

Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.
They're in each other all along.

We are the mirror as well as the face in it.
We are tasting the taste this minute of eternity. We are pain
and what cures pain, both. We are
the sweet cold water and the jar that pours.

I want to hold you close like a lute,
so we can cry out with loving.

You would rather throw stones at a mirror?
I am your mirror, and here are the stones.”
― Rumi, The Essential Rumi

“Are you jealous of the ocean’s generosity?
Why would you refuse to give
this joy to anyone?

Fish don’t hold the sacred liquid in cups!
They swim the huge fluid freedom.”
― Rumi, The Essential Rumi