Quotes from Rumi

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

Hear blessings dropping their blossoms around you.

And if you are a rose, I am rose-shadow.

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

It may be that the satisfaction I need depends on my going away, so that when I've gone and come back, I'll find it at home.

And don't think the garden loses its ecstasy in winter. It's quiet, but the roots are down there riotous.

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.

Let the waters settle and you will see the moon and the stars mirrored in your own being.

Inside you there's an artist you don't know about… say yes quickly, if you know, if you've known it from before the beginning of the universe.

Love is a madman, working his wild schemes, tearing off his clothes, running through the mountains....

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

Suffering is a gift. In it is hidden mercy.

This world's existence is one night long. There's a great lively gathering that night, but some people sleep through it.

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.

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

I want your sun to reach my raindrops, so your heat can raise my soul upward like a cloud.

Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.

Lightning, your presence from ground to sky, no one knows what becomes of me, when you take me so quickly.

This is how we are with wine and beautiful food... we want and we get drunk with wanting, then the headache and bitterness afterward.

Your legs will get heavy and tired. Then comes a moment of feeling the wings you've grown, lifting.

Be occupied, then, with what you really value and let the thief take something else.

Now is the time to unite the soul and the world. Now is the time to see the sunlight dancing as one with the shadows.

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

Gamble everything for love, if you're a true human being. If not, leave this gathering.