Rumi on Discipline Quotes

"The middle path is the way to wisdom."

"The lion is most handsome when looking for food."

"Close your eyes, fall in love, stay there."

"Start a huge, foolish project, like Noah… it makes absolutely no difference what people think of you."

"The beauty you see in me is a reflection of you."

"Run from what's comfortable. Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious."

"Raise your words, not voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder."

"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. I, 232-3 (tr. Helminski, 1990)"

"Whatever purifies you is the right path, I will not try to define it."

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

"Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself."

"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."

"I am not this hair, I am not this skin, I am the soul that lives within."

"Don't grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form."

"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder. Help someone's soul heal. Walk out of your house like a shepherd."

"The only lasting beauty is the beauty of the heart."

"Ignore those that make you fearful and sad, that degrade you back towards disease and death."

"What hurts you, blesses you. Darkness is your candle."

"Be empty of worrying. Think of who created thought! Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open?"

"Be patient where you sit in the dark, the dawn is coming."

"Grace comes to forgive and then forgive again."

"Respond to every call that excites your spirit."

"Silence is the language of God, all else is poor translation."

"If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?"

"Suffering is a gift. In it is hidden mercy."

"Everything in the universe is within you. Ask all from yourself."

"When the world pushes you to your knees, you're in the perfect position to pray."

"The wound is the place where the Light enters you."

"Knock, And He'll open the door. Vanish, And He'll make you shine like the sun. Fall, And He'll raise you to the heavens. Become nothing, And He'll turn you into everything."

"The desire to know your own soul will end all other desires."

"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."

"The spiritual path wrecks the body and afterwards restores it to health."

"Patience with small details makes perfect a large work, like the universe."