These Rumi’s Quotes And Poems Will Melt Your Heart With The Fire Of Love
There are only a few masters that stand the test of time. One of them is the Persian poet called Rumi. His quotes and poems have made a tremendous impact on spiritual seekers.
Before I present to you his poetry, let’s find out who Rumi was, what he is famous for, what he said about Love, and what his philosophy was.
Who Was Rumi?
Jalāl ad-Dīn Mohammad Rūmī is one of the most widely read poets in the world. He lived in the 13th century but his poems are still famous all over the world. Rumi was not only a poet, but he was also a spiritual master, mystic, and theologist.
He speaks of Love as a force that binds us all together. He speaks of God as the only one that exists in all of us. His words go beyond the mind such that only a heart can understand them.
He never gives you a dogma or a belief system to follow. He simply expresses the divine Love he experiences as poems. This Love is not the love we usually talk about. This Love is non-dual and unconditional, which can only be found by searching inside oneself.
Rumi used poetry, music, and dance as the ways to be in union with Divine Love. One can use Rumi’s poetry for self-healing, prayer, and spiritual study. To really get the essence of his poems, one need not open the mind, but just let go of it. Let the heart soak in the beauty of his poems.
Here are Rumi’s top quotes and poems I hand-selected for this post:
100+ Best Quotes And Poems By Rumi
1. “These pains you feel are messengers. Listen to them.”
2. “Your heart knows the way. Run in that direction.”
3. “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.”
4. “I said: what about my eyes?
He said: Keep them on the road.
I said: What about my passion?
He said: Keep it burning.
I said: What about my heart?
He said: Tell me what you hold inside it?
I said: Pain and sorrow.
He said: Stay with it. The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
5. “What you seek is seeking you.”
6. “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.”
7. “Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.”
8. “If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?”
9. “Don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.”
10. “You were born with wings, why prefer to crawl through life?”
11. “You were born with potential.
You were born with goodness and trust.
You were born with ideals and dreams.
You were born with greatness.
You were born with wings.
You are not meant for crawling, so don’t.
You have wings.
Learn to use them and fly.”
12. “Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.”
13. “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.”
14. “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.”
15. “Raise your words, not voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.”
16. “Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment. Cleverness is mere opinion. Bewilderment brings intuitive knowledge.”
17. “Silence is the language of god, all else is poor translation.”
18.
“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
19. “Respond to every call
that excites your spirit.
Ignore those that make you fearful
and sad, that degrade you
back toward disease and death.”
20. “Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”
21. “Let yourself be drawn by the stronger pull of that which you truly love. It will not lead you astray.”
22. “This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.”
23. “I want to sing like the birds sing, not worrying about who hears or what they think.”
24.
“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
25. “Words are a pretext. It is the inner bond that draws one person to another, not words.”
26. “When the world pushes you to your knees, you’re in the perfect position to pray.”
27. “Live life as if everything is rigged in your favor.”
28. “Be full of sorrow, that you may become hill of joy; weep, that you may break into laughter.”
29. “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.”
30. “Don’t you know yet? It is your light that lights the worlds.”
31. “Be empty of worrying. Think of who created thought! Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open? Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking. Live in silence. Flow down and down in always widening rings of being. As you start to walk on the way, the way appears.”
32. “Close your eyes, fall in love, stay there.”
33. “And you? When will you begin that long journey into yourself?”
34. “You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean, in a drop.”
35. “Whenever they rebuild an old building, they must first of all destroy the old one.”
36.
“As you start to walk on the way, the way appears.”
Rumi
37. “Every night Thou dost free our spirits from the body’s snare and erase all impressions on the tablet (of memory).
Our spirits are set free every night from this cage, they are done with audience and talk and tale.
At night prisoners forget their prison, at night governors forget their power.
There is no sorrow, no thought of gain or loss, no idea of this person or that person.
Such is the state of the mystic, even when he is not asleep: God saith, “(Thou wouldst deem them awake) whilst they slept.”
He is asleep, day and night, to the affairs of this world, like a pen in the hands of the Lord.”
38. “If I love myself, I love you. If I love you, I love myself.”
39. “Life is a balance of holding on and letting go.”
40. “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.”
41. “Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder. Help someone’s soul heal. Walk out of your house like a shepherd.”
42. “Raise your words, not voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.”
43. “Once you conquer your selfish self, all your darkness will change to Light.”
44. “What hurts you, blesses you. Darkness is your candle.”
45. “Give up to grace. The ocean takes care of each wave ’til it gets to shore. You need more help than you know.”
46. “Put your thoughts to sleep,
do not let them cast a shadow
over the moon of your heart.
Let go of thinking.”
47. “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”
48.
“All your anxiety is because of your desire for harmony. Seek disharmony, then you will gain peace.”
Rumi
49. “Like a sculptor, if necessary,
carve a friend out of stone.
Realize that your inner sight is blind
and try to see a treasure in everyone.”
50. “Anyone who knows me, should learn to know me again; For I am like the Moon, you will see me with new face everyday.”
51. “Keep digging your well. Water is there somewhere.”
52. “Gratitude is the wine for the soul. Go on. Get drunk.”
53. “Wear gratitude like a cloak and it will feed every corner of your life.”
54. “You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens.”
55. “Love is the bridge between you and everything.”
56. “Whatever purifies you is the right path, I will not try to define it.”
57. “Exhale only love.”
58. “Your longing for ME is my message to you,
All your attempts to reach ME,
Are in reality MY attempts to reach you.”
59.
“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?”
— Rumi
60. “And watch two men washing clothes, one makes dry clothes wet. The other makes wet clothes dry. they seem to be thwarting each other, but their work is a perfect harmony. Every holy person seems to have a different doctrine and practice, but there’s really only one work.”
61. “Seek the wisdom that will untie your knot. Seek the path that demands your whole being!”
62. “When you lose all sense of self the bonds of a thousands chains will vanish. Lose yourself completely, return to the root of your own soul.”
63. “Anything you lose comes around in another form.”
64. “There’s no cure, except the retreat into love, For the suffering of subtly afficted hearts.”
65. “When you are dead, seek for your resting place not in the earth, but in the hearts of men.”
66. “No better love than love with no objective, no more satisfying work than work with no purpose. If you could give up tricks and cleverness, that would be the cleverest trick!”
67. “No sickness worse than imagining thyself to be perfect can afflict thy soul.”
68.
“The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear.”
Rumi
69. “Love risks everything and asks for nothing.”
70. “If you want to win hearts, sow the seeds of Love. If you want heaven, stop scattering thorns on the road.”
71. “I once had a thousand desires. But in my one desire to know you all else melted away.”
72. “Whatever happens, just keep smiling and lose yourself in love.”
73. “Tend to your vital heart, and all that you worry about will be solved.”
74. “Oh soul, you worry too much. You have seen your own strength. You have seen your own beauty. You have seen your golden wings. Of anything less, why do you worry? You are in truth the soul, of the soul, of the soul.”
75. “My longing for you keeps me in this moment My passion gives me courage.”
76. “We can’t help being thirsty, moving toward the voice of water. Milk drinkers draw close to the mother. Muslims, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, shamans, everyone hears the intelligent sound and moves with thirst to meet it.”
77. “What hurts the soul? To live without tasting the water of its own essence.”
78.
“What I had thought of before as God, I met today in a human being.”
Rumi
79. “Life is a balance between holding on and letting go.”
80. “The life of this world is nothing but the harmony of opposites.”
81. “You have woken up late, lost and perplexed but don’t rush to your books looking for knowledge. Pick up a flute instead and let your heart play.”
82. “That which is false troubles the heart, but truth brings joyous tranquility.”
83. “On a day when the wind is perfect, the sail just needs to open and the world is full of beauty. Today is such a day.”
84. “You have forgotten the One
who doesn’t care about ownership,
who doesn’t try to turn a profit
from every human exchange.”
85. “But listen to me. For one moment
quit being sad. Hear blessings
dropping their blossoms
around you.”
86. “Reason is powerless in the expression of Love.”
87. “Wherever you are, and whatever you do, be in love.”
88. “The moon stays bright when it doesn’t avoid the night.”
89.
“The cure for pain is in the pain.”
— Rumi
90. “Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy, absentminded. Someone sober will worry about things going badly. Let the lover be. ”
91. “You think you are alive
because you breathe air?
Shame on you,
that you are alive in such a limited way.
Don’t be without Love,
so you won’t feel dead.
Die in Love
and stay alive forever.”
92. “Keep walking, though there’s no place to get to. Don’t try to see through the distances. That’s not for human beings. Move within, but don’t move the way fear makes you move.”
93. “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.”
94. “Gamble everything for love, if you are a true human being. If not, leave this gathering. Half-heartedness doesn’t reach into majesty.”
95. “Don’t you know Yet? It is your light that lights the World.”
96. “Love is the water of life, jump into this water.”
97. “Without love, all worship is a burden, all dancing is a chore, all music is mere noise.”
98. “The Prophets accept all agony and trust it. For the water has never feared the fire.”
99. “Would you become a pilgrim on the road of love? The first condition is that you make yourself humble as dust and ashes.”
100.
“Doing as others told me, I was Blind.
Rumi
Coming when others called me, I was Lost.
Then I left everyone, myself as well.
Then I found Everyone, Myself as well.”
101. “Learn the alchemy true human beings know. The moment you accept what troubles you’ve been given the door with open.”
102. “What matters is how quickly you do what your soul directs.”
103. “Try something different. Surrender.”
104. “Something opens our wings. Something makes boredom and hurt disappear. Someone fills the cup in front of us: We taste only sacredness.”
105. “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.”
106. “Listen with ears of tolerance! See through the eyes of compassion! Speak with the language of love”
107. “Everyone has been made for some particular work, and the desire for that work has been put in every heart.”
108. “Whoever finds love
beneath hurt and grief
disappears into emptiness
with a thousand new disguises”
109.
“Whenever we manage to love without expectations,
Rumi
calculations, negotiations, we are indeed in heaven.”
110. “Don’t get lost in your pain, know that one day your pain will become your cure.”
111. “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.”
112. “Except for Love, nothing you see will remain forever.”
113. “Happy, not from anything that happens. Warm, not from fire or a hot bath. Light, I register zero on a scale.”
114. “My place is the Placeless, my trace is the Traceless ;
’Tis neither body nor soul, for I belong to the soul of the Beloved.
I have put duality away, I have seen that the two worlds are one;
One I seek, One I know, One I see, One I call. ”
115. “The only thing that will keep you from finding that which you seek is calling off the search.”
116. “Let yourself be gently pulled by the deeper desire of what you want.”
117. “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.”
118. “Nothing I say can explain to you Divine Love
Yet all of creation cannot seem to stop talking about it.”
119. “Look carefully around you and recognize the luminosity of souls. Sit beside those who draw you to that.”
120. “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.”
121. “Our greatest strength lies in the gentleness and tenderness of our heart.”
122. “Half of life is lost in charming others.
The other half is lost in going through anxieties caused by others.
Leave this play. You have played enough.”
123. “THROUGH LOVE all that is bitter will sweet
Through Love all that is copper will be gold.
Through Love all dregs will turn to purest wine
Through Love all pain will turn to medicine.
Through Love the dead will all become alive.
Through Love the king will turn into a slave.”
124.
“You wander from room to room
Hunting for the diamond necklace
That is already around your neck!”
— Rumi
