Life often moves so fast that we seldom have a chance to reflect on the miraculous beauty of it. In fact, we are often confronted with so many challenges and difficulties that it’s difficult to remember what a truly marvelous gift life really is. Luckily, there’s Rumi and his unique ability to inspire with his stunning poetry. Having a collection of inspiring Rumi quotes at hand can be quite helpful, especially when life confronts you with great difficulties. During these challenging times, it can be wonderfully uplifting – sometimes even life-changing – to read Rumi’s wise sayings. His inspirational quotes about life will help you to remember how beautiful your existence already is. Similarly, his poems will encourage you to get back up on your feet whenever life drags you down. Therefore, we’ve created in the following a collection of the most powerful Rumi quotes.
Jalal ad-Din Rumi, the great Persian poet and Sufi mystic, is not only widely popular all around the world but has also become the #1 best-selling poet in the US. The Arabian poet who composed more than 50,000 lines of inspiring and enlightening poems during his lifetime intended with his impressive work to bring the reader closer to the truth. As millions of followers and readers will attest, Rumi greatly succeeded with his mission.
“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”
Jalaluddin Rumi
Rumi’s ecstatic poems have influenced millions of people from all kinds of different backgrounds throughout the ages. Even though he was born 809 years ago, his great influence still endures in the present day and age. This is mainly because his unique way of writing is still capturing the imaginations of modern-day readers. At the same time, he is skillfully able to articulate the deep longing for meaning many of us feel within, which further contributes to his popularity.
The central reason why Rumi is beloved amongst people from all different kinds of religious or spiritual backgrounds is the transcending nature of his poetry. Instead of only addressing the followers of one particular religion, his wise writings are able to deepen everyone’s faith in God, independently of where they are in their own evolution or what they believe in. In fact, his literature transcends time, heritage, language, ethnicity and religious or spiritual background.
While Rumi also discusses other subjects, his poetry mainly focuses on topics such as joy and love. The mystical richness of his poetry is not only posing thought-provoking questions but is also tremendously inspiring. Many more things could be said about the famous poet but let’s have a look at some of his wisest statements. Here are the very best and the most powerful Rumi quotes.
75 Inspiring Rumi Quotes
Rumi’s wise sayings can break existing barriers within us but also in the external world. What makes his inspiring poetry so powerful is that it stems from a profoundly wise individual with above-average insights on life. In fact, the wisdom Rumi’s poems convey is nothing but impressive.
In the following, you can find the most inspiring Rumi quotes that will inspire you, encourage you to grow as a person, and help you to maintain a positive outlook on life.
1. Planting love
“Plant the love of the holy ones within your spirit; don’t give your heart to anything, but the love of those whose hearts are glad.”
Rumi
2. Doing what you love
“Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.”
Rumi
3. Where light enters you
“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
Rumi
4. Beyond right and wrong
“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.”
Rumi
5. That which is beautiful and lovely
“Everything that is made beautiful and fair and lovely is made for the eye of one who sees.”
Rumi
6. Acting small
“Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.”
Rumi
7. Discovering treasures
“Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure.”
Rumi
8. The language of God
“Silence is the language of god, all else is poor translation.”
Rumi
9. Following your passion
“When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.”
Rumi
10. The invisible strength within us
“There is an invisible strength within us; when it recognizes two opposing objects of desire, it grows stronger.”
Rumi
11. Love
“We are born of love; Love is our mother.”
Rumi
12. Being satisfied with stories
“Don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.”
Rumi
13. The power of choice
“And so it is, that both the Devil and the angelic Spirit present us with objects of desire to awaken our power of choice.”
Rumi
14. Beauty is all around us
“Beauty surrounds us, but usually we need to be walking in a garden to know it.”
Rumi
15. Finding love
“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
16. The transformative power of love
“Through Love all that is bitter will be sweet, Through Love all that is copper will be gold, Through Love all dregs will become wine, through Love all pain will turn to medicine.”
Rumi
17. Becoming silent
“Listen! Clam up your mouth and be silent like an oyster shell, for that tongue of yours is the enemy of the soul, my friend. When the lips are silent, the heart has a hundred tongues.”
Rumi
18. The universe within
“Everything in the universe is within you. Ask all from yourself.”
Rumi
19. Words
“Words are a pretext. It is the inner bond that draws one person to another, not words.”
Rumi
20. Crawling through life
“You were born with wings, why prefer to crawl through life?
Rumi
21. A person’s purpose
“Everyone has been made for some particular work, and the desire for that work has been put in every heart.”
Rumi
22. Returning home
“My soul is from elsewhere, I’m sure of that, and I intend to end up there.”
Rumi
23. Being sad when you lose something
“Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.”
Rumi
24. That which you seek
“What you seek is seeking you.”
Rumi
25. Satisfaction
“It may be that the satisfaction I need depends on my going away, so that when I’ve gone and come back, I’ll find it at home.”
Rumi
26. Knowing the stars
“You’ve come to know the fortunate and the inauspicious stars, but you don’t know whether you yourself are fortunate or lucky.”
Rumi
27. The garden of love
“The garden of love is green without limit and yields many fruits other than sorrow or joy. Love is beyond either condition: without spring, without autumn, it is always fresh.”
Rumi
28. Letting go of envy
“Beg of God the removal of envy, that God may deliver you from externals, and bestow upon you an inward occupation, which will absorb you so that your attention is not drawn away.”
Rumi
29. The importance of gratefulness
“Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.”
Rumi
30. Pursuing your passions
“Let yourself be drawn by the stronger pull of that which you truly love.”
Rumi
31. What love really is
“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.”
Rumi
32. The truth will set you free
“That which is false troubles the heart, but truth brings joyous tranquillity.”
Rumi
33. The divine goddess
“The woman is a ray of God. She is not that earthly beloved: she is creative, not created.”
Rumi
34. Mediums
“Water, stories, the body, all the things we do, are mediums that hid and show what’s hidden.”
Rumi
35. Being unhappy
“Why should I be unhappy? Every parcel of my being is in full bloom.”
Rumi
36. About raising your voice
“Raise your words, not voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.”
Rumi
37. Dealing with grief
“Grief can be the garden of compassion. If you keep your heart open through everything, your pain can become your greatest ally in your life’s search for love and wisdom.”
Rumi
38. A love poem
“I want to see you. Know your voice. Recognize you when you first come ’round the corner. Sense your scent when I come into a room you’ve just left. Know the lift of your heel, the glide of your foot. Become familiar with the way you purse your lips then let them part, just the slightest bit, when I lean into your space and kiss you. I want to know the joy of how you whisper.”
Rumi
39. The people you can safely ignore
“Ignore those that make you fearful and sad, that degrade you back towards disease and death.”
Rumi
40. Seeking safety
“Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious.”
Rumi
41. The emptiness in the heart
“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?
Rumi
42. No boundaries exist
“I am neither of the East nor of the West, no boundaries exist within my breast.”
Rumi
43. Love will eventually find its way
“Love will find its way through all languages on its own.”
Rumi
44. You should dance more often
“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.”
Rumi
45. Distilling the essence of all sciences
“This is the essence of all sciences – that you should know who you will be when the Day of Reckoning arrives.”
Rumi
46. Beyond imagination
“When I die, I shall soar with angels, and when I die to the angels, what I shall become you cannot imagine.”
Rumi
47. About mirrors and rust
“If you find the mirror of the heart dull, the rust has not been cleared from its face.”
Rumi
48. The causes of depression
“Your depression is connected to your insolence and refusal to praise.”
Rumi
49. A poem about being left
“You left and I cried tears of blood. My sorrow grows. It’s not just that You left. But when You left my eyes went with You. Now, how will I cry?
Rumi
50. Beating a rug
“When someone beats a rug, the blows are not against the rug, but against the dust in it.”
Rumi
51. The irrelevance of cleverness
“Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.”
Rumi
52. Singing like a bird
“I want to sing like the birds sing, not worrying about who hears or what they think.”
Rumi
53. The gift of being in love
“The gifts of lovers to one another are, in respect to love, nothing but forms; yet, they testify to invisible love.”
Rumi
54. A poem about God
“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.”
Rumi
55. Insomnia
“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
56. Being married
“May this marriage be full of laughter, our every day in paradise.”
Rumi
57. The beloved
“The way the Beloved can fit in my heart, two thousand lives could fit in this body of mine. One kernel could contain a thousand bushels, and a hundred worlds pass through the eye of the needle.”
Rumi
58. Many different paths can lead you home
“There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the ground; there are a thousand ways to go home again.”
Rumi
59. Being irritated
“If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?
Rumi
60. The first love story
“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.”
Rumi
61. Transcending the religions
“What shall I say, O Muslims, I know not myself, I am neither a Christian, nor a Jew, nor a Zoroastrian, nor a Muslim.”
Rumi
62. The mysteries of love
“However much I might try to expound or explain Love, when I come to Love itself, I am ashamed of my explanations… Love alone can explain the mysteries of love and lovers.”
Rumi
63. Sunlight
“Sunlight fell upon the wall; the wall received a borrowed splendor. Why set your heart on a piece of earth, O simple one? Seek out the source which shines forever.”
Rumi
64. The value that really matters
“You know the value of every article of merchandise, but if you don’t know the value of your own soul, it’s all foolishness.”
Rumi
65. A taste of what is to come
“Something opens our wings. Something makes boredom and hurt disappear. Someone fills the cup in front of us: We taste only sacredness.”
Rumi
66. Surrendering to love
“The moment I first heard love I gave up my soul, my heart, and my eyes.”
Rumi
67. About lovers
“Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.”
Rumi
68. Beauty
“That which God said to the rose, and caused it to laugh in full-blown beauty, He said to my heart, and made it a hundred times more beautiful.”
Rumi
69. The most important companion
“I have no companion but Love, no beginning, no end, no dawn. The Soul calls from within me: ‘You, ignorant of the way of Love, set Me free.’
Rumi
70. The king
“I have seen the king with a face of Glory, He who is the eye and the sun of heaven, He who is the companion and healer of all beings, He who is the soul and the universe that births souls.”
Rumi
71. A true blessing
“May these vows and this marriage be blessed.”
Rumi
72. Flying away
“Oh, bird of my soul, fly away now, For I possess a hundred fortified towers.”
Rumi
73. Learning to love
“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.”
Rumi
74. Always let love accompany you
“Wherever you are, and whatever you do, be in love.”
Rumi
75. The benefits of sorrow
“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.”
Rumi
I hope you enjoyed reading these inspiring Rumi quotes.
Stay victorious!