More than 800 years later, Rumi’s words still manage to touch our hearts.
But who exactly was Rumi?
Rumi was an enigmatic Persian poet during the 13th century. He was also a mystic and considered the most celebrated Sufi teacher of all time.
His work gained popularity because of its universal message about peace, desire, love, and passion.
Rumi’s poems are simple enough to be understood and his timeless views about life are still applicable even in our present world.
For this, we are in awe of Rumi’s brilliant mind and in love with his compassionate views. It’s been more than 800 years but one thing is for sure, his words will continue to inspire people from all over the world.
Here are 300 Rumi quotes to help us achieve inner peace and contentment:
“Ignore those that make you fearful and sad.”
“Knock. And he’ll open the door.”
“What you seek is seeking you.”
“The very center of your heart is where life begins – the most beautiful place on earth.”
“When you let go of who you are, you become who you might be.”
“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”
“I found myself.”
“Remember, the entrance door to the sanctuary is inside you.”
“You’ve seen my descent. Now watch my rising.”
“Live life as if everything is rigged in your favor.”
“The universe is not outside of you. Look inside yourself, everything that you want you already are
“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.”
“Your heart knows the way, run in that direction.”
“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.”
“Be patient where you sit in the dark, the dawn is coming.”
“The wound is the place where the light enters you.”
“The quieter you become the more you are able to hear.”
“Everyone has been made for some particular work and the desire for that work has been put in every heart.”
“Start a huge, foolish project, like Noah…it makes absolutely no difference what people think of you.”
“Why are you so enchanted by this world, when a mine of gold lies within you?”
“If you are irritated by every rub, how will you be polished?”
“These pains you feel are messengers. Listen to them.”
“Inside you there’s an artist you don’t know about.”
“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.”
(Buddhism has an incredible amount to teach us about life, inner peace and contentment. In our new eBook, we use iconic Buddhist teachings to provide no-nonsense suggestions for living a better life. Check it out here).
“Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray.”
“The lamps are different, but the light is the same.”
“When you do things from the soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.”
“There is a voice that doesn’t use words, listen.”
“Love is the bridge between you and everything.”
“Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.”
“You have within you more love than you could ever understand.”
“The art of knowing is knowing what to ignore.”
“Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open.”
“You were born with wings, why prefer to crawl through life?”
“Wear gratitude like a cloak and it will feed every corner of your life.”
“My soul is my guide.”
“Don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.”
READ THIS: The 10 most famous classical love poems for him written by a woman
“Close your eyes. Fall in love. Stay there.”
“As you start to walk on the way, the way appears.”
“Life is a balance between holding on and letting go.”
“Raise your words not your voice. It is rain that grows flowers not thunder.”
“Words are a pretext. It is the inner bond that draws one person to another, not words.”
“Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.”
“When the world pushes you to your knees, you’re in the perfect position to pray.”
“Everything that is made beautiful and fair and lovely is made for the eye of one who sees.”
“We are one. Everything in the universe is within you. Ask all from yourself.”
“Ignore those that make you fearful and sad, that degrade you back towards disease and death.”
“Why should I be unhappy? Every parcel of my being is in full bloom.”
“My soul is from elsewhere, I’m sure of that, and I intend to end up there.”
“Actually, your soul and mine are the same, we appear and disappear in each other.”
“Seek the wisdom that will untie your knot. Seek the path that demands your whole being.”
“Know that one day, your pain will become your cure.”
“Set your life on fire. Seek those who fan your flames.”
“I know you’re tired but come, this is the way.”
“All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.”
“Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.”
“It’s your road and yours alone others may walk it with you, but no one can walk it for you.”
“Wherever you are, and whatever you do, be in love.”
“The only lasting beauty is the beauty of the heart.”
“Reason is powerless in the expression of love.”
“This is a subtle truth. Whatever you love you are.”
“If you find me not within you, you will never find me. For I have been with you, from the beginning of me.”
“You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens.”
“Your heart is the size of an ocean. Go find yourself in its hidden depths.”
“Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere, they are in each other all along.”
“Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy, absentminded. Someone sober will worry about things going badly. Let the lover be.”
“There is a force within that gives you life. Seek that.”
“Shine like the universe is yours.”
“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.”
“Silence is the language of god, all else is poor translation.”
“Love is the religion, and the universe is the book.”
“Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.”
“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.”
“If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?”
“Don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.”
“When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.”
“My soul is from elsewhere, I’m sure of that, and I intend to end up there.”
“Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.”
“Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure.”
“Let yourself be drawn by the stronger pull of that which you truly love.”
“Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.”
“I want to sing like the birds sing, not worrying about who hears or what they think.”
“Travel brings power and love back into your life.”
“Why do you stay in prison. When the door is so wide open?”
“Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.”
“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.”
“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.”
“I know you’re tired but come, this is the way.”
“Suffering is a gift. In it is hidden mercy.”
“A thousand half-loves must be forsaken to take one whole heart home.”
“We come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust.”
“Two there are who are never satisfied — the lover of the world and the lover of knowledge.”
“And you? When will you begin that long journey into yourself?”
“Either give me more wine or leave me alone.”
“The cure for pain is in the pain.”
“I closed my mouth and spoke to you in a hundred silent ways.”
“A mountain keeps an echo deep inside. That’s how I hold your voice.”
“What hurts you, blesses you. Darkness is your candle.”
“Study me as much as you like, you will not know me, for I differ in a hundred ways from what you see me to be. Put yourself behind my eyes and see me as I see myself, for I have chosen to dwell in a place you cannot see.”
“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.”
“Who could be so lucky? Who comes to a lake for water and sees the reflection of moon.”
“Christian, Jew, Muslim, shaman, Zoroastrian, stone, ground, mountain, river, each has a secret way of being with the mystery, unique and not to be judged.”
“I didn’t come here of my own accord, and I can’t leave that way. Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.”
“You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.”
“Only from the heart can you touch the sky.”
“In Silence there is eloquence. Stop weaving and see how the pattern improves.”
“Your hand opens and closes, opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralyzed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birds’ wings.”
“Beauty surrounds us.”
“You think because you understand ‘one’ you must also understand ‘two’, because one and one make two. But you must also understand ‘and’.”
“The moon stays bright when it doesn’t avoid the night.”
“Run from what’s comfortable. Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious. I have tried prudent planning long enough. From now on I’ll be mad.”
“Remember. The way you make love is the way God will be with you.”
“Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder. Help someone’s soul heal. Walk out of your house like a shepherd.”
“God turns you from one feeling to another and teaches by means of opposites so that you will have two wings to fly, not on.”
“The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don’t go back to sleep.”
“When you feel a peaceful joy, that’s when you are near the truth.”
“Moonlight floods the whole sky from horizon to horizon; How much it can fill your room depends on its windows.”
“They say there is a doorway from heart to heart, but what is the use of a door when there are no walls?”
“Within tears, find hidden laughter.”
“Seek treasures amid ruins, sincere one. Seek treasures amid ruins, sincere one.”
“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.”
“All people on the planet are children, except for a very few. No one is grown up except those free of desire.”
“When someone beats a rug, the blows are not against the rug, but against the dust in it.”
“Is it really so that the one I love is everywhere?”
“There are lovers content with longing. I’m not one of them.”
“Do not feel lonely, the entire universe is inside you.”
“The rose’s rarest essence lives in the thorns.”
“I once had a thousand desires. But in my one desire to know you all else melted away.”
“The lion is most handsome when looking for food.”
“Not only the thirsty seek the water, the water as well seeks the thirsty.”
“Love comes with a knife, not some shy question, and not with fears for its reputation!”
“Shine like the whole universe is yours.”
“The truth was a mirror in the hands of God. It fell, and broke into pieces. Everybody took a piece of it, and they looked at it and thought they had the truth.”
“Gamble everything for love, if you’re a true human being.”
“Maybe you are searching among the branches, for what only appears in the roots.”
“Pain is a treasure, for it contains mercies.”
“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.”
“What matters is how quickly you do what your soul directs.”
“I am yours. Don’t give myself back to me.”
“Somewhere beyond right and wrong, there is a garden. I will meet you there.”
“Give your weakness to one who helps.”
“Let silence take you to the core of life.”
“If in thirst you drink water from a cup, you see God in it. Those who are not in love with God will see only their own faces in it.”
“She loved him so much she concealed his name in many phrases, the inner meanings known only to her.”
“Whoever’s calm and sensible is insane!”
“You are a lover of your own experience … not of me … you turn to me to feel your own emotion.”
“Try something different. Surrender.”
“In the house of lovers, the music never stops, the walls are made of songs & the floor dances.”
“The ground’s generosity takes in our compost and grows beauty! Try to be more like the ground.
“The universe and the light of the stars come through me.”
“Learn the alchemy true human beings know. The moment you accept what troubles you’ve been given the door with open.”
“If in the darkness of ignorance, you don’t recognize a person’s true nature, look to see whom he has chosen for his leader.”
“I searched for God and found only myself. I searched for myself and found only God.”
“Listen with ears of tolerance! See through the eyes of compassion! Speak with the language of love.”
“I don’t want learning, or dignity, or respectability. I want this music, and this dawn, and the warmth of your cheek against mine.”
“Try not to resist the changes that come your way. Instead let life live through you. And do not worry that your life is turning upside down. How do you know that the side you are used to is better than the one to come?”
“I want to be where your bare foot walks, because maybe before you step, you’ll look at the ground. I want that blessing.”
“The morning wind spreads its fresh smell. We must get up and take that in, that wind that lets us live. Breathe before it’s gone.”
“You and I have spoken all these words, but for the way we have to go, words are no preparation. I have one small drop of knowing in my soul. Let it dissolve in your ocean.”
“This poetry. I never know what I’m going to say.”
“The garden of the world has no limits, except in your mind.”
“I am weary of personal worrying, in love with the art of madness.”
“In the slaughterhouse of love, they kill only the best, none of the weak or deformed. Don’t run away from this dying. Whoever’s not killed for love is dead meat.”
“Woman is the light of God.”
“People of the world don’t look at themselves, and so they blame one another.”
“You had better run from me. My words are fire.”
“Very little grows on jagged rock. Be ground. Be crumbled, so wildflowers will come up where you are.”
“Look past your thoughts, so you may drink the pure nectar of This Moment.”
“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.”
“Whenever we manage to love without expectations, calculations, negotiations, we are indeed in heaven.”
“Patience is not sitting and waiting, it is foreseeing. It is looking at the thorn and seeing the rose, looking at the night and seeing the day. Lovers are patient and know that the moon needs time to become full.”
“Something opens our wings. Something makes boredom and hurt disappear. Someone fills the cup in front of us: We taste only sacredness.”
“Whatever purifies you is the right path, I will not try to define it.”
“Poems are rough notations for the music we are.”
“Have you ever gotten breathless before from a beautiful face, for I see you there, my dear.”
“Never lose hope, my heart, miracles dwell in the invisible. If the whole world turns against you keep your eyes on the Friend.”
“Don’t wait any longer. Dive in the ocean, Leave and let the sea be you.”
“Pull the thorn of existence out of the heart! Fast! For when you do, you will see thousands of rose gardens in yourself.”
“Where the lips are silent the heart has a thousand tongues.”
“I see my beauty in you.”
“Everything you possess of skill, and wealth, and handicraft, wasn’t it first merely a thought and a quest?”
“Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment. Cleverness is mere opinion, bewilderment is intuition.”
“You are the Truth from foot to brow. Now, what else would you like to know?”
“Why struggle to open a door between us when the whole wall is an illusion?”
“Your body is away from me, but there is a window open from my heart to yours.”
“When I am silent, I have thunder hidden inside.”
“Dance until you shatter yourself.”
“There is a basket of fresh bread on your head, yet you go door to door asking for crusts.”
“Speak a new language so that the world will be a new world.”
“When the light returns to its source, it takes nothing of what it has illuminated.”
“I want your sun to reach my raindrops, so your heat can raise my soul upward like a cloud.”
“Hardship may dishearten at first, but every hardship passes away. All despair is followed by hope; all darkness is followed by sunshine.”
“The minute I heard my first love story, I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was.”
“The fault is in the one who blames. Spirit sees nothing to criticize.”
“Darkness may hide the trees and the flowers from the eyes but it cannot hide love from the soul.”
“Thankfulness brings you to the place where the Beloved lives.”
“The heart has its own language. The heart knows a hundred thousand ways to speak.”
“It’s your road and yours alone. others may walk it with you, but no one can walk it for you.”
“For the thirst to possess your love, Is worth my blood a hundred times.”
“Whoever finds love beneath hurt and grief disappears into emptiness with a thousand new disguises.”
“If you want to be more alive, love is the truest health.”
“The angel is free because of his knowledge, the beast because of his ignorance. Between the two remains the son of man to struggle.”
“I want a trouble-maker for a lover, blood spiller, blood drinker, a heart of flame, who quarrels with the sky and fights with fate, who burns like fire on the rushing sea.”
“There is a loneliness more precious than life. There is freedom more precious than the world. Infinitely more precious than life and the world is that moment when one is alone with God.”
“Why am I seeking? I am the same as him. His essence speaks through me. I have been looking for myself.”
“Would you become a pilgrim on the road of love? The first condition is that you make yourself humble as dust and ashes.”
“Keep your intelligence white hot and your grief glistening“ so your life will stay fresh.”
“Because I cannot sleep I make music in the night.”
“Let go of your mind and then be mindful. Close your ears and listen!”
“Your magnificence has made me a wonder. Your charm has taught me the way of love.”
“Although you see the pit, you cannot avoid it.”
“You soak up my soul and mingle me. Each drop of my blood cries out to the earth. We are partners, blended as one.”
“There is a voice that doesn’t use words. Listen.”
“Dancing is not just getting up painlessly, like a leaf blown on the wind; dancing is when you tear your heart out and rise out of your body to hang suspended between the worlds.”
“The Prophets accept all agony and trust it For the water has never feared the fire.”
“We love that s why life is full of so many wonderful gifts.”
“Love said to me, there is nothing that is not me. Be silent.”
“That moon which the sky never saw even in dreams has risen again.”
“Love is an open secret, the most obvious thing in the world and the most hidden, with no why to how it keeps its mystery.”
“Stars burn clear all night till dawn. Do that yourself, and a spring will rise in the dark with water your deepest thirst is for.”
“Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking. Live in silence.”
“Every story is us.”
“There are thousands of wines that can take over our minds. Don’t think all ecstasies are the same!”
“Let the waters settle and you will see the moon and the stars mirrored in your own being.”
“The soul is here for its own joy.”
“A servant wants to be rewarded for what he does. A lover wants only to be in love’s presence, that ocean whose depth will never be known.”
“Your breath touched my soul and I saw beyond all limits.”
“Look carefully around you and recognize the luminosity of souls. Sit beside those who draw you to that.”
“As you live Deeper in the Heart, the Mirror gets clearer and cleaner.”
“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.”
“I cannot sleep in your presence In your absence, tears prevent me you watch me my beloved on each sleepiness night and Only you see the difference.”
“Be certain that in the religion of Love there are no believers and unbelievers. LOVE embraces all.”
“You’ve seen my descent, now watch my rising.”
“I would love to kiss you. The price of kissing is your life.”
“How will you know the difficulties of being human, if you are always flying off to blue perfection?”
“Where will you plant your grief seeds? Workers need the ground to scrape and hoe, not the sky of unspecified desire.”
“There’s a field somewhere beyond all doubt and wrongdoing. I’ll meet you there.”
“Like a shadow, I am and I am not.”
“There is little one can say about love. It has to be lived, and it’s always in motion.”
“The intelligent desire self-control; children want candy.”
“Someone who does not run toward the allure of love walks a road where nothing lives.”
“Peaceful is the one who’s not concerned with having more or less. Unbound by name and fame, he is free from sorrow from the world and mostly from himself.”
“Shams, my body is a candle touched with fire.”
“I went inside my heart to see how it was. Something there makes me hear the whole world weeping.”
“Sit quietly and listen for a voice that will say, “Be more silent.” As that happens, your soul starts to revive.”
“The soul has been given its own ears to hear things the mind does not understand.”
“Observe the wonders as they occur around you. Don’t claim them. Feel the artistry moving through and be silent. Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.”
“Hall of Love has ten thousand swords. Don’t be afraid to use one.”
“Everyone is so afraid of death, but the real Sufis just laugh: nothing tyrannizes their hearts. What strikes the oyster shell does not damage the pearl.”
“Conventional opinion is the ruin of our souls.”
“Flow down and down in always widening rings of being.”
“We can’t help being thirsty, moving toward the voice of water.”
“If it is the bread that you seek, you will have bread. If it is the soul you seek, you will find the soul. If you understand this secret, you know you are that which you seek.”
“Soul receives from soul that knowledge, therefore not by book nor from the tongue. If knowledge of mysteries come after emptiness of mind, that is the illumination of heart.”
“A pen went scribbling along. When it tried to write love, it broke.”
“This is what love does and continues to do. It tastes like honey to adults and milk to children.”
“The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear.”
“This that is tormented and very tired, tortured with restraints like a madman, this heart.”
“Sometimes you hear a voice through the door calling you… This turning toward what you deeply love saves you.”
“Be a helpful friend, and you will become a green tree with always new fruit, always deeper journeys into love.”
“The beauty you see in me is a reflection of you.”
“Don’t turn away. Keep your gaze on the bandaged place. That’s where the light enters you.”
“Nothing I say can explain to you Divine Love Yet all of creation cannot seem to stop talking about it.”
“Look for the answer inside your question.”
“I said, “I just want to know you and then disappear.” She said, “Knowing me does not mean dying.”
“The result of my life is no more than three words: I was raw, I became cooked, I was burnt.”
“Love is a river. Drink from it.”
“Where lowland is, that’s where water goes. All medicine wants is pain to cure.”
“Wherever you stand, be the Soul of that place.”
“Love rests on no foundation. It is an endless ocean, with no beginning or end.”
“Judge the moth by the beauty of the candle.”
“Body is not veiled from soul, neither soul from body, Yet no man hath ever seen a soul.”
“In his mind she lay at his lap with his fingers gliding thru her straight beautiful hair. He smiles and says” your beauty lights up everything around you.”
“When someone is counting out gold for you, don’t look at your hands, or the gold. Look at the giver.”
“In the silence of love you will find the spark of life.”
“Each has to enter the nest made by the other imperfect bird.”
“Without the frown of clouds and lightning, the vines would be burned by the smiling sun.”
“Oh my friend, all that you see of me is a shell, the rest belongs to love.”
“It is certain that an atom of goodness on the path of faith is never lost.”
“Look at the moon in the sky, not the one in the lake.”
“Love is not an emotion, it’s your very existence.”
“The middle path is the way to wisdom.”
“I am filled with you. Skin, blood, bone, brain, and soul. There’s no room for lack of trust, or trust. Nothing in this existence but that existence.”
“There is a way between voice and presence, where information flows. In disciplined silence it opens; with wandering talk it closes.”
“I wait with silent passion for one gesture one glance from you.”
“Your soul is so close to mine That what you dream, I know. … I know everything you think of: your heart is so close to mine!”
“Your eyelashes will write on my heart the poem that could never come from the pen of a poet.”
“Don’t make the body do what the spirit does best, and don’t put a big load on the spirit that the body could easily carry.”
“When I am with you, everything is prayer.”
“There is a moon inside every human being. Learn to be companions with it.”
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.”
“Stop the words now. Open the window in the center of your chest, and let the spirits fly in and out.”
“There are no edges to my loving now.”
“Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will never lead you astray.”
“If you look too closely at the form, you’ll miss the essence.”
“Everything in the universe is a pitcher brimming with wisdom and beauty.”
“People want you to be happy, don’t keep serving them your pain.”
“The universe is not outside of you. Look inside yourself; everything that you want, you already are.”
“I belong to no religion. My religion is love. Every heart is my temple.”
