1. A mountain keeps an echo deep inside. That’s how I hold your voice.

- Rumi

2. We carry inside us the wonders we seek outside us.

- Rumi

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

- Rumi

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

- Rumi

5. 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.

- Rumi

6. The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don’t go back to sleep.

- Rumi

7. 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

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

- Rumi

9. Remember. The way you make love is the way God will be with you.

- Rumi

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

- Rumi

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

- Rumi

12. Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

- Rumi

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

- Rumi

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

- Rumi

15. Learn the alchemy true human beings know. The moment you accept what troubles you’ve been given the door with open.

- Rumi

16. 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

17. I am not this hair, I am not this skin, I am the soul that lives within.

- Rumi

18. When all your desires are distilled; You will cast just two votes – to love more, and be happy.

- Rumi

19. The ground’s generosity takes in our compost and grows beauty! Try to be more like the ground.

- Rumi

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

- Rumi

21. These pains you feel are messengers. Listen to them.

- Rumi

22. Listen with ears of tolerance! See through the eyes of compassion! Speak with the language of love.

- Rumi

23. 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

24. Study me as much as you like, you will not know me, for I differ in a hundred ways from what you see me to be. Put yourself behind my eyes and see me as I see myself, for I have chosen to dwell in a place you cannot see.

- Rumi

25. Something opens our wings. Something makes boredom and hurt disappear. Someone fills the cup in front of us: We taste only sacredness.

- Rumi

26. The only lasting beauty is the beauty of the heart.

- Rumi

27. Study me as much as you like, you will never know me. For I differ a hundred ways from what you see me to be.

- Rumi

28. Anyone who genuinely and consistently with both hands looks for something, will find it.

- Rumi

29. 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.

- Rumi

30. 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

31. 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.

- Rumi

32. Prayer clears the mist and brings back peace to the soul.

- Rumi

33. A thousand half-loves must be forsaken to take one whole heart home.

- Rumi

34. 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

35. I want to be where your bare foot walks, because maybe before you step, you’ll look at the ground. I want that blessing.

- Rumi

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

- Rumi

37. Either give me more wine or leave me alone.

- Rumi

38. I have been a seeker and I still am, but I stopped asking the books and the stars. I started listening to the teaching of my soul.

- Rumi

39. Conventional opinion is the ruin of our souls.

- Rumi

40. Caught by our own thoughts, we worry about everything.

- Rumi

41. Life is a balance of holding on and letting go.

- Rumi

42. 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

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

- Rumi

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

- Rumi

45. When someone is counting out gold for you, don’t look at your hands, or the gold. Look at the giver.

- Rumi

46. You were born with wings, why prefer to crawl through life?

- Rumi

47. Why are you knocking at every door? Go, knock at the door of your own heart.

- Rumi

48. 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.

- Rumi

49. And you? When will you begin that long journey into yourself?

- Rumi

50. Not only the thirsty seek the water, the water as well seeks the thirsty.

- Rumi

51. 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

52. Clean out your ears, don’t listen for what you already know.

- Rumi

53. 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

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

- Rumi

55. Why should I be weary when every cell of my body is bursting with life?

- Rumi

56. I closed my mouth and spoke to you in a hundred silent ways.

- Rumi

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

- Rumi

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

- Rumi

59. Inside any deep asking is the answering.

- Rumi

60. The spirit is so near that you can’t see it! But reach for it… don’t be a jar, full of water, whose rim is always dry. Don’t be the rider who gallops all night and never sees the horse that is beneath him.

- Rumi

61. I should be suspicious of what I want.

- Rumi

62. Gamble everything for love, if you’re a true human being. If not, leave this gathering. Half-heartedness doesn’t reach into majesty.

- Rumi

63. Woman is the light of God.

- Rumi

64. Everything is emptiness. Everything else, accidental. Emptiness brings peace to your loving. Everything else, disease. In this world of trickery, emptiness is what your soul wants.

- Rumi

65. Be kind and honest, and harmful poisons will turn sweet inside you.

- Rumi

66. Let silence take you to the core of life.

- Rumi

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

- Rumi

68. Patience with small details makes perfect a large work, like the universe.

- Rumi

69. Everyone is overridden by thoughts; that’s why they have so much heartache and sorrow.

- Rumi

70. Is it really so that the one I love is everywhere?

- Rumi

71. Dance, when you’re broken open. Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you’re perfectly free.

- Rumi

72. Christian, Jew, Muslim, shaman, Zoroastrian, stone, ground, mountain, river, each has a secret way of being with the mystery, unique and not to be judged.

- Rumi

73. Come out of the circle of time and into the circle of love.

- Rumi

74. Wear gratitude like a cloak and it will feed every corner of your life.

- Rumi

75. Whoever’s calm and sensible is insane!

- Rumi

76. Do not feel lonely, the entire universe is inside you.

- Rumi

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

- Rumi

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

- Rumi

79. The whole universe is contained within a single human being – you.

- Rumi

80. Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy, absentminded. Someone sober will worry about things going badly. Let the lover be.

- Rumi

81. 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.

- Rumi

82. 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.

- Rumi

83. The moon stays bright when it doesn’t avoid the night.

- Rumi

84. Seek the wisdom that will untie your knot. Seek the path that demands your whole being.

- Rumi

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

- Rumi

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

- Rumi

87. They say there is a doorway from heart to heart, but what is the use of a door when there are no walls?

- Rumi

88. A thousand half-loves must be forsaken to take one whole heart home.” “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.

- Rumi

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

- Rumi

90. You had better run from me. My words are fire.

- Rumi

91. In Silence there is eloquence. Stop weaving and see how the pattern improves.

- Rumi

92. There is a secret medicine given only to those who hurt so hard they can’t hope. The hopers would feel slighted if they knew.

- Rumi

93. We come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust.

- Rumi

94. What will our children do in the morning if they do not see us fly?

- Rumi

95. Two there are who are never satisfied — the lover of the world and the lover of knowledge.

- Rumi

96. With every breath, I plant the seeds of devotion, I am a farmer of the heart.

- Rumi

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

- Rumi

98. In the house of lovers, the music never stops, the walls are made of songs and the floor dances.

- Rumi

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

- Rumi

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

- Rumi

101. Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious.

- Rumi

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

- Rumi

103. Suffering is a gift. In it is hidden mercy.

- Rumi

104. To me nothing in the world is as precious as a genuine smile, especially from a child.

- Rumi

105. There is a voice that doesn’t use words, listen.

- Rumi

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

- Rumi

107. The morning wind spreads its fresh smell. We must get up and take that in, that wind that lets us live. Breathe before it’s gone.

- Rumi

108. Let yourself be drawn by the stronger pull of that which you truly love.

- Rumi

109. Be like the sun for grace and mercy. Be like the night to cover others’ faults. Be like running water for generosity. Be like death for rage and anger. Be like the Earth for modesty. Appear as you are. Be as you appear.

- Rumi

110. The fault is in the one who blames. Spirit sees nothing to criticize.

- Rumi

111. You think because you understand ‘one’ you must also understand ‘two’, because one and one make two. But you must also understand ‘and’.

- Rumi

112. When I am silent, I fall into the place where everything is music.

- Rumi

113. Lovers have heartaches that can’t be cured by drugs or sleep, or games, but only by seeing their beloved.

- Rumi

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

- Rumi

115. If you are looking for a friend who is faultless, you will be friendless.

- Rumi

116. You and I have spoken all these words, but for the way we have to go,words are no preparation. I have one small drop of knowing in my soul. Let it dissolve in your ocean.

- Rumi

117. 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.

- Rumi

118. Who could be so lucky? Who comes to a lake for water and sees the reflection of moon.

- Rumi

119. Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

- Rumi

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

- Rumi

121. Let us carve gems out of our stony hearts and let them light our path to love.

- Rumi

122. Ignore those that make you fearful and sad, that degrade you back towards disease and death.

- Rumi

123. A warm, rainy day-this is how it feels when friends get together. Friend refreshes friend then, as flowers do each others, in a spring rain.

- Rumi

124. The very center of your heart is where life begins. The most beautiful place on earth.

- Rumi

125. Whenever we manage to love without expectations, calculations, negotiations, we are indeed in heaven.

- Rumi

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

- Rumi

127. Everything in the universe is within you. Ask all from yourself.

- Rumi

128. Let your teacher be love itself.

- Rumi

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

- Rumi

130. Whoever has heart’s doors wide open, could see the sun itself in every atom.

- Rumi

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

- Rumi

132. Be drunk with love, for love is all that exists.

- Rumi

133. Be an empty page, untouched by words.

- Rumi

134. Whenever sorrow comes, be kind to it. For God has placed a pearl in sorrow’s hand.

- Rumi

135. At the end of my life, with just one breath left, if you come, I’ll sit up and sing.

- Rumi

136. Love sometimes wants to do us a great favor: hold us upside down and shake all the nonsense out.

- Rumi

137. 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.

- Rumi

138. Silence is the language of God, all else is poor translation.

- Rumi

139. Seek the sound that never ceases. Seek the sun that never sets.

- Rumi

140. This is what love does and continues to do. It tastes like honey to adults and milk to children.

- Rumi

141. All people on the planet are children, except for a very few. No one is grown up except those free of desire.

- Rumi

142. 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.

- Rumi

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

- Rumi

144. This being human is a guest house. Every morning is a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor…Welcome and entertain them all. Treat each guest honorably. 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.

- Rumi

145. A little while alone in your room will prove more valuable than anything else that could ever be given you.

- Rumi

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

- Rumi

147. 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

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

- Rumi

149. Try something different. Surrender.

- Rumi

150. Death has nothing to do with going away. The sun sets. The moon sets. But they are not gone.

- Rumi

151. Your hand opens and closes, opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralyzed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birds’ wings.

- Rumi

152. 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

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

- Rumi

154. All that you think is rain is not. Behind the veil angels sometimes weep.

- Rumi

155. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

- Rumi

156. Become the sky. Take an axe to the prison wall. Escape.

- Rumi

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

- Rumi