Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi (Persian Muslim Mystic)

Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhī (1207–73,) better known as Rūmī, was a Persian poet and Sūfī mystic. He is often referred to as Mevlānā, meaning “Our Guide.”

Rūmī was born north of the Amu Darya (Oxus) River, in Persian-speaking Tajikistan or Afghanistan, from where Rūmī’s family fled a Mongol annexation. They settled in Konya, then the capital city of the Seljuk Empire, now in Turkey. Rūmī’s father was a practicing mystic who preached to devout disciples in Persian.

Rūmī was sent to study in the highly regarded Arabic-speaking madrasa schools of Damascus and Aleppo and returned to Konya in his thirties to take on his late father’s position as an Islāmic cleric and legal scholar.

Rūmī remained in Konya for the rest of his life. He founded the Mevlevi Sūfī order, which survives to this day. His followers, the whirling dervishes, lose themselves in trance and dance, occasionally spinning like tops for hours on end. Rūmī’s great poetic works are the Masnavi or “spiritual couplets” and the Divan, a compendium of thousands of lyric poems.

Rūmī is respected as an icon not only of the Islāmic civilization (or of Afghan, Iranian, Tajik, or Turkish heritage,) but also of the global culture. Rūmī’s poetry and religious writings are among the most beloved and respected in Islām and elsewhere. The Mevlāna Museum in Konya, consisting of Rūmī’s mausoleum and the dervish lodge (Dergah,) is Turkey’s second most-visited tourist attraction after Istanbul’s Topkapi Palace.

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi

Into my heart’s night
Along a narrow way
I groped; and lo! the light,
An infinite land of day.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Topics: Light

O, happy the soul that saw its own faults.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Topics: Happy, Reflection

Burdens are the foundations of ease and bitter things the forerunners of pleasure.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Topics: Challenges, Courage

That which is false troubles the heart, but truth brings joyous tranquility.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Topics: Truth, Joy, Wisdom

He is a letter to everyone. You open it. It says, Live!
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Topics: Enthusiasm

Be like melting snow. Wash yourself of yourself.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi

Revile those who flatter you.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Topics: Courage

You have forgotten the One
who doesn’t care about ownership,
who doesn’t try to turn a profit
from every human exchange.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi

Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are a hundred ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi

When I am with you, we stay up all night. When you are not here, I cannot go to sleep. Praise God for these two insomnias and the difference between them.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Topics: God, Love

The sword of reality is the saint’s protection.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Topics: Truth, Wisdom

Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi

Fasting is the first principle of medicine.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Topics: Energy

I am burning. If anyone lacks tinder, let him set his rubbish ablaze with my fire.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Topics: Enthusiasm

On the way there is no harder pass than this: fortunate is he who does not carry envy as a companion.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Topics: Wisdom, Character

Who could be so lucky? Who comes to a lake for water and sees the reflection of moon.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi

Paradise is surrounded by what we dislike; the fires of hell are surrounded by what we desire.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Topics: Wisdom, Desire

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.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Topics: Love

Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi

Don’t allow your animal nature to rule your reason.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Topics: Desire, Wisdom

When your heart becomes the grave of your secrets, that desire of yours will be gained more quickly. The prophet said that anyone who keeps secret his inmost thought will soon attain the object of his desire. When seeds are buried in the earth, their inward secrets become the flourishing garden.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Topics: Earth, Fear, Courage

Start a huge, foolish project, like Noah did. It makes absolutely no difference what people think of you.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi

one cannot lodge in if.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Topics: Action

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.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi

My friend, the sufi is the friend of the present moment. To say tomorrow is not our way.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Topics: Friend, Action

Stay with friends who support you in these. Talk with them about sacred texts, and how you are doing, and how they are doing, and keep your practices together.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Topics: Love, Friendship, Friend, Support

This discipline and rough treatment are a furnace to extract the silver from the dross. This testing purifies the gold by boiling the scum away.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Topics: Growth, Courage

I died a mineral, and became a plant.
I died a plant and rose an animal.
I died an animal and I was man.
Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi

Loosen the bonds of avarice from your hands and neck.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Topics: Wisdom, Desire

Don’t let your throat tighten with fear. Take sips of breath all day and night, before death closes your mouth.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Topics: Courage, Fear, Death

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