This article is a collection of some of the most profound quotes by the ancient poet, scholar and mystic, Rumi.
Most of the quotes have been taken from Rumi’s poems and cover Rumi’s views on the mind, body, soul, love, emotions, solitude, consciousness and nature of the universe.
List of quotes
Here’s the list of 98 of the most beautiful quotes from Rumi.
Rumi on the law of attraction
What you seek is seeking you.
The world is a mountain. Whatever you say, it will echo it back to you.
Rumi on listening to your intuition
There is a voice that doesn’t use words. Listen.
The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear.
If light is in your heart, you will find your way home.
Rumi on solitude
No more words. In the name of this place we drink in with our breathing, stay quiet like a flower. So the night-birds will start singing.
A white flower grows in the quietness. Let your tongue become that flower.
Let silence take you to the core of life.
Silence is the language of God.
Rumi on the power of imagination
Everything you possess of skill, and wealth, and handicraft, wasn’t it first merely a thought and a quest?
Rumi on patience
If you are wholly perplexed and in straits, have patience, for patience is the key to joy.
Be quiet now and wait. It may be that the ocean, the one we desire so to move into and become, desires us out here on land a little longer.
Rumi on your eternal nature
You are not a drop in a ocean, you are the entire ocean in a drop.
Do not feel lonely, the entire universe is inside you.
Shine like the whole universe is yours.
Rumi on religion
I belong to no religion. My religion is love. Every heart is my temple.
Rumi on wisdom
Wisdom is like the rain. It’s supply is unlimited, but it comes down according to what the occasion requires – in winter and spring, in summer and autumn, always in due measure, more or less, but the source of that rain is the oceans itself, which has no limits.
Rumi on balance
Life is a balance between holding on and letting go.
The middle path is the way to wisdom
Rumi on one’s capacity to perceive
What else can I say? You will only hear what you are ready to hear.
Rumi on not worrying about what other people think
I want to sing like the birds sing, not worrying about who hears or what they think.
Don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.
Start a huge, foolish project, like Noah…it makes absolutely no difference what people think of you.
If you can step away from your need for approval, all that you do, top to bottom, will be approved.
Rumi on letting go of the self (ego)
Be melting snow. Wash yourself of yourself.
A pearl in the shell does not touch the ocean. Be a pearl without a shell.
Although you appear in earthly form, your essence is pure consciousness. When you lose all sense of self the bonds of a thousand chains will vanish. Lose yourself completely, return to the root of the root of your own soul.
Master your vicious ego and judgmental mind then with clear purpose, silent and alone you can start on your journey toward Spirit.
Try and be a sheet of paper with nothing on it. Be a spot of ground where nothing is growing, where something might be planted, a seed, possibly, from the Absolute.
Rumi on doing things that your heart desires
When you do things from the soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy. But when action comes from another section, the feeling disappears.
Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.
Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray.
Respond to every call that excites your spirit.
Rumi on looking within
Everything in the universe is within you. Ask all from yourself.
Do not feel lonely, the entire universe is inside you.
You wander from room to room hunting for the diamond necklace that is already around your neck!
Whatever you want, ask it of yourself. Whatever you’re looking for can only be found inside of you.
Why are you so enchanted by this world when a mine of gold lies within you?
Don’t look for the remedy for your troubles outside yourself. You are the medicine. You are the cure for your own sorrow.
Remember, the entrance door to the sanctuary is inside you.
The inspiration you seek is already within you. Be silent and listen.
Don’t go off sightseeing. The real journey is right here. The great excursion starts from exactly where you are. You are the world. You have everything you need. You are the secret. You are the wide opened.
Rumi on hope
If continually you keep your hope, quivering like the willow in longing for Heaven, spiritual water and fire will continually arrive and increase your subsistence.
Rumi on perceiving from a blank space
The Absolute works with nothing. The workshop, the materials are what does not exist.
Try and be a sheet of paper with nothing on it. Be a spot of ground where nothing is growing, where something might be planted, a seed, possibly, from the Absolute.
Rumi on unconscious living (living in the mind)
This place is a dream, only a sleeper considers it real.
Rumi on persistence
Keep on knocking, ’til the joy inside opens a window. Look to see who’s there.
Rumi on the value of suffering
Sorrow prepares you for joy. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place.
What hurts you, blesses you. Darkness is your candle.
These pains you feel are messengers. Listen to them.
Suffering is a gift. In it is hidden mercy.
God continually turns you from one state of feeling to another, revealing truth by means of opposites; so that you may have the two wings of fear and hope; for the bird with one wing is unable to fly.
The wound is the place where the Light enters you.
Hardship may dishearten at first, but every hardship passes away. All despair is followed by hope; all darkness is followed by sunshine.
Rumi on changing negative energy into positive energy
The ground’s generosity takes in our compost and grows beauty! Try to be more like the ground.
Rumi on self control
Let’s ask God to help us to self-control: for one who lacks it, lacks His Grace. The undisciplined person doesn’t wrong himself alone — but sets fire to the whole world. Discipline enabled Heaven to be filled with light; discipline enabled the angels to be immaculate and holy.
Rumi on self love
When you find love, you will find yourself. When you have the knowledge of love, you will then feel peace in your heart. Stop searching here and there, the Jewels are inside you. This, my friends, is the holy meaning of love.
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.
Find the sweetness in your own heart, then you may find the sweetness in every heart.
Rumi on taking a break from thinking
Put your thoughts to sleep, do not let them cast a shadow over the moon of your heart. Let go of thinking.
Fast from thoughts, fast: thoughts are like the lion and the wild ass; men’s hearts are the thickets they haunt.
Rumi on judging others
Many of the faults you see in others, dear reader, are your own nature reflected in them.
Rumi on self esteem
Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.
You were born with wings, why prefer to crawl through life?
Rumi on love
If I love myself. I love you. If I love you. I love myself.
Love rests on no foundation. It is an endless ocean, with no beginning or end.
Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.
Love is a river. Drink from it.
In the silence of love you will find the spark of life.
Love is the religion, and the universe is the book.
Come out of the circle of time and into the circle of love.
Read 55 more love quotes by Rumi.
