Jalaluddin Rumi Quotes

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.

A wealth you cannot imagineflows through you.Do not consider what strangers say.Be secluded in your secret heart-house,that bowl of silence.

My wails of sorroware tormenting my soul

My BelovedKnow that my beloved in hidden from everyoneKnow that she is beyond the belief of all beliefsKnow that in my heart she is as clear as the moonKnow that she is the life in my body and in my soul

Only union with you gives joy. The rest if tearing down one building to put up another.

Shall I tell you our secret? We are charming thieves who steal hearts and never fail because we are the friends of the One.Blessed is the poem that comes through me but not of me because the sound of my own music will drown the song of Love.

Say I Am YouI am dust particles in sunlight.I am the round sun.To the bits of dust I say, Stay.To the sun, Keep moving.I am morning mist, and the breathing of evening.I am wind in the top of a grove, and surf on the cliff.Mast, rudder, helmsman, and keel,I am also the coral reef they founder on.I am a tree with a trained parrot in its branches.Silence, thought, and voice.The musical air coming through a flute,a spark of a stone, a flickering in metal.Both candle and the moth crazy around it.Rose, and the nightingale lost in the fragrance.I am all orders of being, the circling galaxy,the evolutionary intelligence, the lift,and the falling away. What is, and what isn't.You who know Jelaluddin, You the one in all,say who I am. Say I am You.

I am yours.Don't give myself back to me.

And so it is, that both the Devil and the angelic Spirit present us with objects of desire to awaken our power of choice. There is an invisible strength within us; when it recognizes two opposing objects of desire, it grows stronger.

Dear soul, don't set a high value on someone before they deserve it; You either lose them or ruin yourself...!

You dance inside my chest,where no one sees you,but sometimes I do, and thatsight becomes this art.

I am your moon and your moonlight tooI am your flower garden and your water tooI have come all this way, eager for youWithout shoes or shawlI want you to laughTo kill all your worriesTo love youTo nourish you.

Your faces are very beautiful,but they are wooden cages.You had better run from me.My words are fire.

My lips got lost on the way to the kiss - that's how drunk Iwas.

I choose to love you in silence…For in silence I find no rejection,I choose to love you in loneliness…For in loneliness no one owns you but me,I choose to adore you from a distance…For distance will shield me from pain,I choose to kiss you in the wind…For the wind is gentler than my lips,I choose to hold you in my dreams…For in my dreams, you have no end.

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.

I want that love that moved the mountains. I want that love that split the ocean. I want that love that made the winds tremble. I want that love that roared like thunder. I want that love that will raise the dead. I want that love that lifts us to ecstasy. I want that love that is the silence of eternity.

Your depression is connected to your insolenceand refusal to praise. Whoever feels himself walking on the path, and refuses to praise--that man or womansteals from others every day--is a shoplifter!The sun became full of light when it got hold of itself.Angels only began shining when they achieved discipline.The sun goes out whenever the cloud of not-praising comes.The moment the foolish angel felt insolent, he heard the door close.

Your heart is the size of an ocean. Go find yourself in its hidden depths.

SUDDEN RESURRECTION! Endless mercy!Blazing fire in the thickets of thought! Today you came laughing Unlocking dungeons Came to the meek Like god’s grace and bountyYou are the antechamber to the sunYou are the hope’s prerequisite You are sought Seeker Terminus PrincipiaYou pulse in every chest adorn every idea then permit their realizationSpirit- spring, irreplaceableDelight of action and cognition.All the rest is pretext, fraud- the former, illness; the latter, cureWe’re jaundiced by that fraudHeart-set to slay an innocentDrunk, now on angel eyesNow on plain bread and soupTaste this intoxication, drop your ratiocination Savor these delectable Drop the debatablesA little bread and greensShould not entail so much trouble*Ghazal 1

Knock, And He'll open the doorVanish, And He'll make you shine like the sunFall, And He'll raise you to the heavensBecome nothing, And He'll turn you into everything.

The wit taught by God to the beeIs withheld from the lion and the wild ass.

Infinite mercy flows continuallyBut you're asleep and can't see it.The sleeper's robe goes on drinking river waterWhile he frantically hunts mirages in dreamsAnd runs continually here and there shouting,"There'll be water further on, I know!"It's this false thinking that blocks himFrom the path that leads to himself,By always saying, "Further on!"He's become estranged from "here":Because of a false fantasyHe's driven from reality.

With life as short as a half taken breath, don't plant anything but love.

I made an oath to myself:as long as I liveas long as my soul remains in this bodyI won't deviate from the right waybut later I looked to my left and then to my rightand I saw our beloved everywherehow could I make a wrong turn?

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.

Give up to grace. The ocean takes care of each wave 'til it gets to shore. You need more help than you know.

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.

Go find yourself first so you can also find me.

Poetry can be dangerous, especially beautiful poetry, because it gives the illusion of having had the experience without actually going through it.

I break out laughing. I frown.I yell and scream. Sometimes,if one jokes and giggles,one causes war.So I hide how tickled I am.Tears well up in my eyes.My body is a large city.Much grieving in one sector.I live in another part.Lakewater.Something on fire over here.I am sour when you are sour,sweet when you are sweet.You are my face and my back.Only through you can I knowthis back-scratching pleasure.Now people the likes of you and Icome clapping, inventing dances,climbing into this high meadow.I am a spoiled parrot who eats only candy.I have no interest in bitter food.Some have been given harsh knowledge. Not I.Some are lame and jerking along.I am smooth and glidingly quick.Their road is full of washed-out placesand long inclines. Mine isroyally level, effortless.The huge Jerusalem mosque stands inside me,and women full of light.Laughter leaps out.It is the nature of the rose to laugh.It cannot help but laugh.

I know you're tired but come, this is the way.

A life without love is of no account. Don’t ask yourself what kind of love you should seek, spiritual or material, divine or mundane, Eastern or Western. Divisions only lead to more divisions. Love has no labels, no definitions. It is what it is, pure and simple. Love is the water of life. And a lover is a soul of fire! The universe turns differently when fire loves water.

The word grows mad on the fermentOf angry actions, the authorities can only inflictVisible punishments. Now regard with the unpracticedInner eye the unseen presence of Judgement thenYou will understand the nature of your soul's torment

Words are a pretext. It is the inner bond that draws one person to another, not words.

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.

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.

you are a volume in the divine booka mirror to the power that created the universewhatever you want, ask it of yourselfwhatever you're looking for can only be foundinside of you

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.

Beyond Islam and unbelief there is a desert plain. For us, there is a passion in the midst of that expanse. The knower who reaches there will prostrate, there is neither Islam nor unbelief, nor any 'where' in that place.

My heart is so smallit's almost invisible.How can You place such big sorrows in it?"Look," He answered,"your eyes are even smaller,yet they behold the world.

You whispered softly in the ear of my joyous heart.You know what's on my mind, you've heard my thoughts.I closed my mouth and spoke to you in a hundred silent ways.

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.

There is some kiss we want with our whole lives, the touch of spirit on the body. Seawaterbegs the pearl to break its shell.and the lily, how passionatelyit needs some wild darling! Atnight, I open the window and askthe moon to come and press itsface against mine. Breathe intome. Close the language door andopen the lovers window. The moonwon’t use the door, only the window.

Lovers find secret placesinside this violent worldwhere they make transactions with beauty.

Love comes with a knife, not some shy question, and not with fears for its reputation!

From "Wetness and Water"How does a part of the world leave the world?How can wetness leave water?Do not try to put out a fireby throwing on more fire.Do not wash a wound with blood.No matter how fast you run,your shadow more than keeps up.Sometimes it's in front.Only full, overhead sundiminishes your shadow.But that shadow has been serving you.What hurts you blesses you.Darkness is your candle.Your boundaries are your quest.

Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder. Help someone's soul heal. Walk out of your house like a shepherd.

All the tears which we creatures shed for Him are not tears as many think but pearls....

Why struggle to open a door between us when the whole wall is an illusion?

Late, by myself, in the boat of myself,no light and no land anywhere,cloudcover thick. I try to stayjust above the surface, yet I'm already underand living within the ocean.