By Jalal-Uddin Rumi
Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.
Friends are enemies sometimes, and enemies friends.
I was a tiny bug. Now a mountain. I was left behind. Now honored at the head. You healed my wounded hunger and anger, and made me a poet who sings about joy.
If your guidance is your ego, don’t rely on luck for help. you sleep during the day and the nights are short. By the time you wake up your life may be over.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy, absent-minded. Someone sober will worry about events going badly. Let the lover be.
Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you really love.
Most people guard against going into the fire, and so end up in it.
My friend, the sufi is the friend of the present moment. To say tomorrow is not our way.
Nightingales are put in cages because their songs give pleasure. Whoever heard of keeping a crow?
No longer a stranger, you listen all day to these crazy love-words. Like a bee you fill hundreds of homes with honey, though yours is a long flight from here.
No mirror ever became iron again; No bread ever became wheat; No ripened grape ever became sour fruit. Mature yourself and be secure from a change for the worse. Become the light.
Only from the heart Can you touch the sky.
Patience is the key to joy.
People of the world don’t look at themselves, and so they blame one another.
Since in order to speak, one must first listen, learn to speak by listening.
That which is false troubles the heart, but truth brings joyous tranquility.
The intelligent want self-control; children want candy.
The middle path is the way to wisdom.
The only lasting beauty is the beauty of the heart.
Thirst drove me down to the water where I drank the moon’s reflection.
To praise is to praise how one surrenders to the emptiness.
We come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust.
We rarely hear the inward music, but we’re all dancing to it nevertheless.
You think the shadow is the substance.
Jalal-Uddin Rumi (1207-1273) — Turkish Sufi Mystic Poet
