Inspiring Quotes By Rumi On Life and Love

The most quoted Rumi quotes on love and life resonate with so many people today centuries after they were first written.

Who is Rumi?

Rumi was a spiritual teacher and poet who lived in thirteenth century Persia. He is considered one of the most influential Sufi thinkers of all time. Considered to be a mystic, poet and philosopher, Rumi’s teachings have been popularized in the West by thinkers such as Alan Watts and Deepak Chopra.

Rumi’s poetry often speaks of love, loss, and the journey of the soul. He is known for his beautiful and mystical words that have inspired generations. Here are some of Rumi’s most inspirational quotes on love and life.

Best Quotes Of Rumi

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

― Rumi


How do I know who I am or where I am? How could a single wave locate itself in an ocean?

– Rumi


The desire to know your own soul will end all other desires.

– Rumi


Listen to the sound of waves within you.

– Rumi


The only lasting beauty is the beauty of the heart.

– Rumi


“Do not feel lonely, the entire universe is inside you.
Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.

Set your life on fire. Seek those who fan your flames.”

― Rumi


When someone beats a rug, the blows are not against the rug, but against the dust in it.

– Rumi


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

– Rumi


Be an empty page, untouched by words.

– Rumi


Life is balance of holding on and letting go.

– Rumi


Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment. Cleverness is mere opinion. Bewilderment brings intuitive knowledge.

– Rumi


When the world pushes you to your knees, you’re in the perfect position to pray.

– Rumi


There are many ways to the Divine. I have chosen the ways of song, dance, and laughter.

– Rumi


Start a huge, foolish project, like Noah. It makes absolutely no difference what people think of you.

– Rumi


Whatever lifts the corners of your mouth, trust that.

– Rumi


What you seek is seeking you.

– Rumi


You were born with wings. Why prefer to crawl through life?

– Rumi


Moonlight floods the whole sky from horizon to horizon. How much it can fill your room depends on its windows.

– Rumi


Best Rumi Quotes

Wherever you stand, be the soul of that place.

– Rumi


Beauty surrounds us, but usually we need to be walking in a garden to know it.

– Rumi


Why, when God’s world is so big, did you fall asleep in a prison, of all places?

– Rumi


Gratitude is the wine for the soul. Go on. Get drunk.

– Rumi


If reason dominates in man, he rises higher than angels. If lust overpowers man, he descends lower than the beast.

– Rumi


Your heart knows the way. Run in that direction.

– Rumi


If light is in your heart, you will find your way home.

– Rumi


By God, when you see your beauty you will be the idol of yourself.

– Rumi


I once had a thousand desires. But in my one desire to know you, all else melted away.

– Rumi


“The rose’s rarest essence lives in the thorns.”

– Rumi


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.

– Rumi


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.

– Rumi


Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.

– Rumi


Achieve some perfection yourself, so that you may not fall into sorrow by seeing the perfection in others.

– Rumi

Related: Finding Yourself Quotes


Conventional opinion is the ruin of our souls.

– Rumi


Everything that is made beautiful and fair and lovely is made for the eye of one who sees.

– Rumi


When you seek love with all your heart you shall find its echo in the universe.

– Rumi


The beauty you see in me is a reflection of you.

– Rumi


“Whoever finds love
beneath hurt and grief
disappears into emptiness
with a thousand new disguises”

― Jelalludin Rumi


Rumi Quotes On Life

Raise your words, not voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.

– Rumi


You’ve seen my descent. Now watch my rising.

– Rumi


The wound is the place where the Light enters you.

– Rumi


I don’t want learning, or dignity, or respectability. I want this music, and this dawn, and the warmth of your cheek against mine.

– Rumi


Be melting snow. Wash yourself of yourself.

– Rumi


That which is false troubles the heart, but truth brings joyous tranquility.

– Rumi


All your anxiety is because of your desire for harmony. Seek disharmony, then you will gain peace.

– Rumi


“But listen to me. For one moment
quit being sad. Hear blessings
dropping their blossoms
around you.”

― Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi


You have forgotten the One who doesn’t care about ownership, who doesn’t try to turn a profit from every human exchange.

– Rumi


Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open?

– Rumi


We carry inside us the wonders we seek outside us.

– Rumi


Always remember you are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, smarter than you think and twice as beautiful as you’d ever imagined.

– Rumi


Be like a tree and let the dead leaves drop.

– Rumi


Love is the water of life, jump into this water.

– Rumi


Looking up gives light, although at first it makes you dizzy.

– Rumi


Remember, the entrance door to the sanctuary is inside you.

– Rumi


When you lose all sense of self, the bonds of a thousand chains will vanish.

– Rumi


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


Quotes By Rumi

Don’t get lost in your pain, know that one day your pain will become your cure.

– Rumi


“Love is the bridge between you and everything.”

― Rumi


Look at the moon in the sky, not the one in the lake.

– Rumi


We rarely hear the inward music, but we’re all dancing to it nevertheless.

– Rumi


Very little grows on jagged rock. Be ground. Be crumbled, so wild flowers will come up where you are.

– Rumi


Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.

– Rumi


In the blackest of your moments, wait with no fear.

– Rumi


If you want money more than anything, you’ll be bought and sold your whole life.

– Rumi


It’s your road and yours alone. Others may walk it with you, but no one can walk it for you.

– Rumi


“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.”

― Rumi


Which is worth more, a crowd of thousands, or your own genuine solitude?

– Rumi


I searched for God and found only myself. I searched for myself and found only God.

– Rumi


Wherever you are, and whatever you do, be in love.

– Rumi


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


Don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.

– Rumi


In order to understand the dance you must be still. And in order to truly understand stillness you must dance.

– Rumi


My soul is from elsewhere, I’m sure of that, and I intend to end up there.

– Rumi


The lion is most handsome when looking for food.

– Rumi


Quotes From Rumi

One of the marvels of the world: The sight of a soul sitting in prison with the key in its hand.

– Rumi


If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?

– Rumi


The soul has been given its own ears to hear things mind does not understand.

– Rumi


Set your life on fire. Seek those who fan your flames.

– Rumi


Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.

– Rumi


We came whirling out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust… The stars made a circle, and in the middle, we dance.

– Rumi


Dance where you can break yourself up to pieces and totally abandon your worldly passions.

– Rumi


Why are you so enchanted by this world, when a mine of gold lies within you?

– Rumi


Laugh as much as you breathe. Love as long as you live.

– Rumi


Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure.

– Rumi


Wisdom tells us we are not worthy; love tells us we are. My life flows between the two.

– Rumi


When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.

– Rumi

Rumi Sayings

Keep silent, because the world of silence is a vast fullness

– Rumi


“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.”

― Rumi


“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


If all you can do is crawl, start crawling.

– Rumi


Wisdom and knowledge exist so we can distinguish right from wrong.

– Rumi


Each moment contains a hundred messages from God.

– Rumi


Without love, all worship is a burden, all dancing is a chore, all music is mere noise.

– Rumi


Close your eyes, fall in love, stay there.

– Rumi


Everyone has been made for some particular work, and the desire for that work has been put in every heart.

– Rumi


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

– Rumi


When you feel a peaceful joy, that’s when you are near truth.

– Rumi


“Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray.”

― Rumi


You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean, in a drop.

– Rumi


I want to sing like the birds sing, not worrying about who hears or what they think.

– Rumi


The message behind the words is the voice of the heart.

– Rumi


Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.

– Rumi


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.

– Rumi


“This is love:
to fly toward a secret sky,
to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment.
First, to let go of life.
In the end, to take a step without feet;
to regard this world as invisible,
and to disregard what appears to be the self.

Heart, I said, what a gift it has been
to enter this circle of lovers,
to see beyond seeing itself,
to reach and feel within the breast.”

― Rumi

Related: Best Baltasar Gracian Quotes



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