What do you have to gain by reading the best Rumi quotes on love and life?
To answer that question, you’ll have to know more about the person behind the quotes.
As a 13th century Sufi mystic and poet, Rumi (full name: Jalal al-Din Rumi) is best remembered for his lyrics and for his didactic epic, Masnavi-yi Ma ‘navi (“Spiritual Couplets”).
Fame wasn’t what he was aiming for.
But over the centuries, people of all faiths have come to appreciate the wisdom of the quotes shared below.
100 of the Best Rumi Quotes
1. “Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.”
2. “You were born with wings, why prefer to crawl through life?”
3. “Everything that is made beautiful and fair and lovely is made for the eye of one who sees.”
4. “Why should I be unhappy? Every parcel of my being is in full bloom.”
5. “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.”
6. “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?”
7. “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.”
8. “Wherever you are, and whatever you do, be in love.”
9. “And so it is, that both the devil and the angelic spirits present us with objects of desire to awaken our power of choice.”
10. “Start a huge, foolish project, like Noah…it makes absolutely no difference what people think of you.”
11. “These pains you feel are messengers. Listen to them.”
12. “Only from the heart can you touch the sky.”
13. “The moment you accept what troubles you’ve been given, the door will open.”
14. “Your heart knows the way. Run in that direction.”
15. “Keep silent, because the world of silence is a vast fullness.”
16. “In the blackest of your moments, wait with no fear”
17. “I want to sing like the birds sing, not worrying about who hears or what they think.”
18. “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.”
19. “Be full of sorrow, that you may become full of joy; weep, that you may break into laughter.”
20. “I am not this hair, I am not this skin, I am the soul that lives within.”
21. “Let the beauty we love be what we do.”
22. “What hurts you, blesses you. Darkness is your candle.”
23. “Let your teacher be love itself.”
24. “Laugh as much as you breathe. Love as long as you live.”
25. “Very little grows on jagged rock. Be ground. Be crumbled, so wildflowers will come up where you are.”
26. “Life is a balance of holding on and letting go.”
27. “The wealth within you, your essence, is your kingdom.”
28. “You are not meant for crawling, so don’t. You have wings. Learn to use them and fly.”
29. “With every breath, I plant the seeds of devotion, I am a farmer of the heart.”
30. “Achieve some perfection yourself, so that you may not fall into sorrow by seeing the perfection in others.”
31. “Whoever has heart’s doors wide open, could see the sun itself in every atom.”
32. “Love sometimes wants to do us a great favor: hold us upside down and shake all the nonsense out.”
33. “Beauty surrounds us, but usually we need to be walking in a garden to know it.”
34. “Lovers have heartaches that can’t be cured by drugs or sleep, or games, but only by seeing their beloved.”
35. “I have neither a soul nor a body, for I come from the very Soul of all souls.”
36. “Discard yourself and thereby regain yourself. Spread the trap of humility and ensnare love.”
37. “In their seeking, wisdom and madness are one and the same. On the path of love, friend and stranger are one and the same.”
38. “Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you really love.”
39. “Clean out your ears, don’t listen for what you already know.”
40. “When you lose all sense of self, the bonds of a thousand chains will vanish.”
41. “Two there are who are never satisfied – the lover of the world and the lover of knowledge.”
42. “Why are you knocking at every door? Go, knock at the door of your own heart.”
43. “Love risks everything and asks for nothing.”
44. “You have within you more love than you could ever understand.”
45. “The minute I heard my first love story I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.”
46. “There is no salvation for the soul but to fall in love. Only lovers can escape out of these two worlds.”
47. “This is what love does and continues to do. It tastes like honey to adults and milk to children.”
48. “I once had a thousand desires. But in my one desire to know you all else melted away.”
49. “This sky where we live is no place to lose your wings so love, love, love.”
50. “I am yours. Don’t give myself back to me.”
51. “If you love someone, you are always joined with them – in joy, in absence, in solitude, in strife.”
52. “Now I am sober and there’s only the hangover and the memory of love.”
53. “Tend to your vital heart, and all that you worry about will be solved.”
54. “I have no companion but Love, no beginning, no end, no dawn. The soul calls from within me: ‘You, ignorant of the way of Love, set me free.”
55. “Do not worry if all the candles in the world flicker and die. We have the spark that starts the fire.”
56. “There is a life in you, search that life, search the secret jewel in the mountain of your body.”
57. “On the path of love we are neither masters nor the owners of our lives. We are only a brush in the hand of the master painter.”
58. “Be grateful for your life, every detail of it, and your face will come to shine like a sun, and everyone who sees it will be made glad and peaceful.”
59. “The illuminated life can happen now, in the moments left. Die to your ego, and become a true human being.”
60. “In each moment the fire rages, it will burn away a hundred veils. And carry you a thousand steps toward your goal.”
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61. “Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you really love.”
62. “If destiny comes to help you, love will come to meet you. A life without love isn’t a life.”
63. “When you feel a peaceful joy, that’s when you are near truth.”
64. “Travelers, it is late. Life’s sun is going to set. During these brief days that you have strength, be quick and spare no effort of your wings.”
65. “I learned that every mortal will taste death. But only some will taste life.”
66. “With life as short as a half-taken breath, don’t plant anything but love.”
67. “A craftsman pulled a reed from the reed bed, cut holes in it, and called it a human being. Since then, it’s been wailing a tender agony of parting, never mentioning the skill that gave it life as a flute.”
68. “If you want money more than anything, you’ll be bought and sold your whole life.”
69. “Observe the wonders as they occur around you. Don’t claim them. Feel the artistry moving through and be silent. Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.”
70. “Make peace with the universe. Take joy in it. It will turn to gold. Resurrection will be now. Every moment, a new beauty.”
71. “When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.”
72. “You cannot hide love. Love will get on its way. To the heart of someone you love. Far or near, it goes home. To where it belongs.To the heart of lovers”
73. “Love is the house of God and you are living in that house.”
74. “Love flows down. The ground submits to the sky and suffers what comes. Is the ground worse for giving in like that? Do not put blankets over the drum. Open completely. Let your spirit ear listen to the green dome’s passionate murmur.”
75. “Whenever we can manage to love without expectations, calculations, negotiations, we are indeed in heaven.”
76. “Love is not an emotion, it’s your very existence”
77. “The way you make love is the way God will be with you.”
78. “Love is the cure, for your pain will keep giving birth to more pain until your eyes constantly exhale love as effortlessly as your body yields its scent.”
79. “The heart has its own language. The heart knows a hundred thousand ways to speak.”
80. “Love rests on no foundation. It is an endless ocean, with no beginning or end.”
81. “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?”
82. “Sometimes you hear a voice through the door calling you… This turning toward what you deeply love saves you.”
83. “A thousand half-loves must be forsaken to take one whole heart home.”
84. “Gamble everything for love, if you are a true human being. If not, leave this gathering. Half-heartedness doesn’t reach into majesty.”
85. “Love comes with a knife, not some shy question, and not with fears for its reputation!”
86. “All your anxiety is because of your desire for harmony. Seek disharmony, then you will gain peace.”
87. “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.”
88. “My soul is from elsewhere, I’m sure of that, and I intend to end up there.”
89. “Don’t turn away. Keep your gaze on the bandaged place. That’s where the light enters you.”
90. “We are one. Everything in the universe is within you. Ask all from yourself.”
91. “It’s your road, and yours alone, others may walk it with you, but no one can walk it for you.”
92. “If light is in your heart, you will find your way home.”
93. “Don’t be satisfied with stories. How things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.”
94. “There is a force within that gives you life. Seek that.”
95. “Be motivated like the falcon, hunt gloriously. Be magnificent as the leopard, fight to win. Spend less time with nightingales and peacocks. One is all talk, the other only color.”
96. “As you start to walk on the way, the way appears.”
97. “Come, seek, for search is the foundation of fortune: every success depends upon focusing the heart.”
98. “Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you really love”
99. “Before death takes away what you are given, give away what there is to give.”
100. “When someone criticizes or disagrees with you, a small ant of hatred and antagonism is born in your heart. If you do not squash that ant at once, it might grow into a snake, or even a dragon.”
Conclusion
Which quote — or quotes — stood out for you? Which ones spoke to you as if they were meant for you today?
Keep these quotes somewhere you can read them again, to remind you of the person you want to be. You can write them on a whiteboard or design a desktop wallpaper image or poster with a favorite quote.
If a particular quote feels like it could be your own personal motto, you can even have a mug created to remind you of it every day.
You were born to grow in wisdom and to share that with others. May these quotes help you in this. And may they bring healing and encouragement for the days ahead.
