Rumi Quotes on Life
Rumi's poetry on life, gathered here, treats human existence as a brief, restless passage whose meaning is found in love and in surrender to change. Several of the most popular lines, among them the counsel not to grieve since anything lost comes round in another form, and the invitation to let life live through you, circulate widely today and are marked here as attributed rather than firmly sourced. The verses securely drawn from his Persian works strike the same notes: Rumi urges the soul not to sleep through life but to seek the Beloved, to choose the new over the old, and above all to refuse a life passed without love, since love is the water of life. For Rumi, to live well is to be awake, to let go, and to burn.
Quotes
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Attributed to Rumi:
“What you seek is seeking you.”
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Attributed to Rumi:
“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
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Attributed to Rumi:
“Don't grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.”
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Attributed to Rumi:
“Try not to resist the changes that come your way. Instead, let life live through you.”
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“Alas for this life so light, beware of this slumber so heavy, O soul seek the Beloved, O friend seek the Friend O watchman be wakeful; it behoves not a watchman to sleep.”
A Dictionary of Oriental Quotations(1911) | p. 88, Diwan-i-Shams-i-Tabriz (Nicholson) -
“Ah! O crow, give up this life and live anew! In view of God’s changes cast away your life! Choose the new, give up the old, For each single present year is better than three past.”
A Dictionary of Oriental Quotations(1911) | p. 122 (Whinfield) -
“Prize not at all life that has passed without love, Love is the water of life: receive it in thy heart and soul.”
A Dictionary of Oriental Quotations(1911) | pp. 288–9, Diwan-i-Shams-i-Tabriz (Nicholson) -
“Thou wilt never more endure without the flame, when thou hast known the rapture of burning. If the water of life should come to thee, it would not stir thee from the flame.”
A Dictionary of Oriental Quotations(1911) | p. 60, Diwan-i-Shams-i-Tabriz (Nicholson)