Rumi is revered by many for his reflections on life, love, Sufism, and the wonders of our universe. He was also a brilliant poet and spiritual master! Centuries later, we still turn to his wisdom in the form of popular Rumi quotes.
Rumi, (born as Jalāl ad-Dīn Mohammad Balkhī), was a 13th-century Persian poet, Islamic scholar, Sufi mystic, and Hanafi faqih. He was born on September 30, 1207, in the Balkh province of Afghanistan, and died in Konya, Turkey, on December 17, 1273.
Rumi’s spiritual legacy has influenced Iranians, Tajiks, Turks, Greeks, Pashtuns, and other Central Asian Muslims, as well as Muslims on the Indian subcontinent, for the past seven centuries. His poems have been widely translated into a variety of languages and media around the world. Rumi has been dubbed the “world’s most popular poet.” Below are 132 of Rumi’s most popular quotes on life, love, and silence.
Table of Contents
1. Live life as if everything is rigged in your favor.
Rumi quotes on love
Love is the bridge between you and everything.
Close your eyes, fall in love, stay there.
This is a subtle truth. Whatever you love you 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.
Words are a pretext. It is the inner bond that draws one person to another, not words.
Wherever you are, and whatever you do, be in love.
Reason is powerless in the expression of love.
Would you become a pilgrim on the road of love? The first condition is that you make yourself humble as dust and ashes.
Be certain that in the religion of Love there are no believers and unbelievers. LOVE embraces all.
Be soulful. Be kind. Be in love.
Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.
Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray.
14. The universe is not outside of you. Look inside yourself; everything that you want, you already are.
Rumi quotes on silence
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing 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.
Your old life was a frantic running from silence. Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking. Live in silence.
This is how it always is when I finish a poem. A great silence overcomes me and I wonder why I ever thought to use language.
Keep silence, be mute. If you have not yet become the tongue of God, be an ear!
Do not consider what strangers say. Be secluded in your secret heart-house, that bowl of silence.
I will be waiting here for your silence to break, for your soul to shake, for your love to wake!
All is known in the sacredness of silence.
Silence is an ocean. Speech is a river. When the ocean is searching for you, don’t walk into the river. Listen to the ocean.
There is a way between voice and presence, where information flows. In disciplined silence it opens; with wandering talk it closes.
This silence, this moment, every moment. If it’s genuinely inside you, brings what you need.
Carry your baggage towards silence when you seek the signs of the way.
Be quiet, the secret cannot be spoken. It is wrapped in silence.
Let silence take you to the core of life.
I choose to love you in silence, for in silence I find no rejection.
Let silence be the art you practice.
In the silence between your heart beat bides a summons. Do you hear it? Name it if you must, or leave it forever nameless, but why pretend it is not there?
In the silence of LOVE you will find the Spark of LIFE.
In silence there is eloquence. Stop weaving and see how the pattern improves.
Silence is the language of god, all else is poor translation.
Silence gives answers.
There is a place where words are born of silence.
Sing to me in the silence of your heart and I will rise up to hear your triumphant song.
Let silence speak to you about the secrets of the universe.
Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking. Live in silence.
Ground yourself, strip yourself down too blind loving silence.
Keep silent, because the world of silence is a vast fullness.
Silence is the root of everything. If you spiral into its void a hundred voices will thunder messages you long to hear.
I want that love that is the silence of eternity.
43. Raise your words, not voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.
Inspirational Rumi quotes
Everyone has been made for some particular work, and the desire for that work has been put in every heart.
Work. Keep digging your well. Water is there somewhere.
Patience with small details makes perfect a large work, like the universe.
You are not meant for crawling, so don’t. You have wings. Learn to use them and fly.
There is a life force within your soul, seek that life. There is a gem in the mountain of your body, seek that mine. O traveler, if you are in search of that, don’t look outside, look inside yourself and seek that.
You are not one, you are a thousand. Just light your lantern.
You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean, in a drop.
Anyone who genuinely and consistently with both hands looks for something will find it.
Whether one moves slowly or with speed, the one who is a seeker will be a finder.
Let us carve gems out of our stony hearts and let them light our path to love.
Start a huge, foolish project, like Noah… it makes absolutely no difference what people think of you.
When I am silent, I fall into the place where everything is music.
The garden of the world has no limit except in your mind.
57. As you start to walk on the way, the way appears.
Rumi quotes on life
Whoever has heart’s doors wide open, could see the sun itself in every atom.
These pains you feel are messengers. Listen to them.
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.
You were born with wings. Why prefer to crawl through life?
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.
The lion is most handsome when looking for food.
Why should I be unhappy? Every parcel of my being is in full bloom.
Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment. Cleverness is mere opinion. Bewilderment brings intuitive knowledge.
Anything which is more than our necessity is poison. It may be power, wealth, hunger, ego, greed, laziness, love, ambition, hate or anything.
There’s a field somewhere beyond all doubt and wrong doing. I’ll meet you there.
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.
Seek the wisdom that will untie your knot. Seek the path that demands your whole being.
Dance until you shatter yourself.
I am not this hair, I am not this skin, I am the soul that lives within.
I want to sing like the birds sing, not worrying about who hears or what they think.
Patience is the key to joy.
Respond to every call that excites your spirit.
To praise the sun is to praise your own eyes.
And so it is, that both the devil and the angelic spirits present us with objects of desire to awaken our power of choice.
If the light is in your heart, you will find your way home.
What you seek is seeking you.
Why do you stay in prison, when the door is so wide open?
Achieve some perfection yourself, so that you may not fall into sorrow by seeing the perfection in others.
Be empty of worrying. Think of who created thought.
Set your life on fire. Seek those who fan your flames.
Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.
Do not feel lonely, the entire universe is inside you.
Sit, be still, and listen.
When the world pushes you to your knees, you’re in the perfect position to pray.
The wound is the place where the light enters you.
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?
There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the ground; there are a thousand ways to go home again.
All your anxiety is because of your desire for harmony. Seek disharmony, then you will gain peace.
Let yourself become living poetry.
The world is a mountain, in which your words are echoed back to you.
Look at the moon in the sky, not the one in the lake.
You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens.
Be an empty page, untouched by words.
With every breath, I plant the seeds of devotion, I am a farmer of the heart.
Poetry can be dangerous, especially beautiful poetry because it gives the illusion of having had the experience without actually going through it.
Let go of your mind and then be mindful. Close your ears and listen.
The source of now is here.
It’s your road, and yours alone, others may walk it with you, but no one can walk it for you.
Be full of sorrow, that you may become a hill of joy; weep, that you may break into laughter.
The wealth within you, your essence, is your kingdom.
Whatever purifies you is the right path, I will not try to define it.
The very center of your heart is where life begins – the most beautiful place on earth.
Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.
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.
Ignore those that make you fearful and sad, that degrade you back towards disease and death.
Your heart is the size of an ocean. Go find yourself in its hidden depths.
I know you’re tired but come, this is the way.
Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder. Help someone’s soul heal. Walk out of your house like a shepherd.
Be full of sorrow, that you may become hill of joy; weep, that you may break into laughter.
Grace comes to forgive and then forgive again.
Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open.
Half-heartedness doesn’t reach into majesty.
Forget safety. Live where you fear to live.
Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.
If light is in your heart, you will find your way home.
Wherever you stand, be the soul of that place.
What is planted in each person’s soul will sprout.
Your depression is connected to your insolence and refusal to praise.
Don’t you know yet? It is your light that lights the world.
The only lasting beauty is the beauty of the heart.
Very little grows on jagged rock. Be ground. Be crumbled, so wild flowers will come up where you are.
Everything that is made beautiful and fair and lovely is made for the eye of one who sees.
What hurts you, blesses you. Darkness is your candle.
Become the sky. Take an axe to the prison wall. Escape.
The message behind the words is the voice of the heart.
You were born with wings, why prefer to crawl through life?
Conventional opinion is the ruin of our souls.
In each moment the fire rages, it will burn away a hundred veils. And carry you a thousand steps toward your goal.
Don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.
The Prophets accept all agony and trust it. For the water has never feared the fire.
