80 Rumi Quotes To Change Your Outlook Towards Life

“The beauty you see in me is a reflection of you.” – Rumi
Most of the time what we find lovely is ultimately a reflection of our innermost soul. Rumi’s observations on the importance of the beauty that lies within have the power to inspire generations. Most of the hugely popular Rumi quotes emphasize the inherent beauty, love, and grace in everything you feel around. You would definitely fall in love with the way he defines beauty as something that resides in our hearts, minds, and actions rather than something that is only physical and superficial. Let’s check some of the most powerful Rumi quotes about inner beauty, love, and friendship that are sure to inspire you and change your overall outlook towards life.
Revered as a great poet and spiritual guru, Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi was a Persian poet, Sufi mystic, and Islamic dervish. Rumi worked as a lawyer and religion instructor until he was 37 years old when he met Shams Tabrizi, a traveling dervish. Shams Tabrizi soon became Rumi’s spiritual guru and close friend, and his life was forever changed. His discipline and knowledge have transcended all national and ethnic boundaries since the 13th century.
After their friendship lasted about three years, Shams mysteriously vanished. Rumor has it that one of Rumi’s sons assassinated him because he was envious of the close bond both of them shared. Rumi was heartbroken over the death of his dear friend, but he channeled his grief into poems in which Shams is reverently acknowledged. Rumi’s poetry is a collection of spiritual experiences, a deep understanding of nature’s hidden beauty, a song, a dance, an idea, a sensation, and just about everything that makes us human. All of Rumi’s quotes below demonstrate how spiritual and profound his observations are about inner beauty, love, and friendship.
So here are the best Rumi quotes and sayings that will inspire you and change your outlook towards life:
Rumi Quotes
- “Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.” – Rumi
- “Ignore those that make you fearful and sad.” – Rumi
- “What you seek is seeking you.” – Rumi
- “The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” – Rumi
- “Raise your words, not voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.” – Rumi
- “Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.” – Rumi
- “Everything in the universe is within you. Ask all from yourself.” – Rumi
- “When you let go of who you are, you become who you might be.” – Rumi
- “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.” – Rumi
- “Christian, Jew, Muslim, shaman, Zoroastrian, stone, ground, mountain, river, each has a secret way of being with the mystery, unique and not to be judged.” – Rumi
- “Live life as if everything is rigged in your favor.” – Rumi
- “If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?” – Rumi
- “Keep silent, because the world of silence is a vast fullness.” – Rumi
- “Everything that is made beautiful and fair and lovely is made for the eye of one who sees.” – Rumi
- “You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean, in a drop.” – Rumi
- “Words are a pretext. It is the inner bond that draws one person to another, not words.” – Rumi
- “Why should I be unhappy? Every parcel of my being is in full bloom.” – Rumi
- “I want to sing like the birds sing, not worrying about who hears or what they think.” – Rumi
- “If in the darkness of ignorance, you don’t recognize a person’s true nature, look to see whom he has chosen for his leader.” – Rumi
- “Everyone has been made for some particular work and the desire for that work has been put in every heart.” – Rumi
- “Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.” – Rumi
- “Silence is the language of god, all else is poor translation.” – Rumi
- “The Prophets accept all agony and trust it. For the water has never feared the fire.” – Rumi
- “Whenever they rebuild an old building, they must first of all destroy the old one.” – Rumi
- “There is a candle in your heart, ready to be kindled. There is a void in your soul, ready to be filled. You feel it, don’t you?” – Rumi
- “As you start to walk on the way, the way appears.” – Rumi
- “If the foot of the trees were not tied to earth, they would be pursuing me. For I have blossomed so much, I am the envy of the gardens.” – Rumi
- “I have been a seeker and I still am, but I stopped asking the books and the stars. I started listening to the teaching of my Soul.” – Rumi
- “When the world pushes you to your knees, you’re in the perfect position to pray.” – Rumi
- “I searched for God and found only myself. I searched for myself and found only God.” – Rumi
- “The lamps are different, but the light is the same.” – Rumi
- “By God, when you see your beauty you will be the idol of yourself.” – Rumi
- “Very little grows on jagged rock. Be ground. Be crumbled, so wildflowers will come up where you are.” – Rumi
- “Your depression is connected to your insolence and refusal to praise.” – Rumi
- “You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens.” – Rumi
- “Everyone has been made for some particular work and the desire for that work has been put in every heart.” – Rumi
Rumi Quotes about Love
- “Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.” – Rumi
- “Wherever you are, and whatever you do, be in love.” – Rumi
- “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.” – Rumi

- “Would you become a pilgrim on the road of love? The first condition is that you make yourself humble as dust and ashes.” – Rumi
- “Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because for those who love with heart and soul there is no such thing as separation.” – Rumi
- “This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without feet.” – Rumi
- “In your light I learn how to love. In your beauty, how to make poems. You dance inside my chest where no-one sees you, but sometimes I do, and that sight becomes this art.” – Rumi
- “Love is the bridge between you and everything.” – Rumi

- “Patience is not sitting and waiting, it is foreseeing. It is looking at the thorn and seeing the rose, looking at the night and seeing the day. Lovers are patient and know that the moon needs time to become full.” – Rumi
- “Listen with ears of tolerance! See through the eyes of compassion! Speak with the language of love.” – Rumi
- “Travel brings power and love back into your life.” – Rumi
- “Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray.” – Rumi
- “Reason is powerless in the expression of love.” – Rumi
- “I am so close, I may look distant. So completely mixed with you, I may look separate. So out in the open, I appear hidden. So silent, because I am constantly talking with you.” – Rumi
- “Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy, absentminded. Someone sober will worry about things going badly. Let the lover be.” – Rumi
- “Don’t wait any longer. Dive in the ocean, Leave and let the sea be you.” – Rumi
- “If I love myself, I love you. If I love you, I love myself.” – Rumi
- “Your heart is the size of an ocean. Go find yourself in its hidden depths.” – Rumi
- “The heart has its own language. The heart knows a hundred thousand ways to speak.” – Rumi
- “Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.” – Rumi
Rumi Quotes about Life
- “The moment you accept what troubles you’ve been given, the door will open.” – Rumi
- “The very center of your heart is where life begins – the most beautiful place on earth.” – Rumi
- “Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.” – Rumi
- “Your heart knows the way. Run in that direction.” – Rumi
- “Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious.” – Rumi
- “You were born with wings, why prefer to crawl through life?” – Rumi
- “Don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.” – Rumi
- “There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the ground; there are a thousand ways to go home again.” – Rumi
- “The universe is not outside of you. Look inside yourself, everything that you want you already are.” – Rumi
- “When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.” – Rumi
- “This place is a dream. Only a sleeper considers it real. Then death comes like dawn, and you wake up laughing at what you thought was your grief.” – Rumi
- “Ignore those that make you fearful and sad, that degrade you back towards disease and death.” – Rumi
- “The morning wind spreads its fresh smell. We must get up and take that in, that wind that lets us live. Breathe before it’s gone.” – Rumi
- “These pains you feel are messengers. Listen to them.” – Rumi

- “Start a huge, foolish project, like Noah…it makes absolutely no difference what people think of you.” – Rumi
- “And so it is, that both the devil and the angelic spirits present us with objects of desire to awaken our power of choice.” – Rumi
- “Set your life on fire. Seek those who fan your flames.” – Rumi
- “It’s your road and yours alone. Others may walk it with you, but no one can walk it for you.” – Rumi
- “Suffering is a gift. In it is hidden mercy.” – Rumi
- “Why do you stay in prison, when the door is so wide open?” – Rumi
Rumi Quotes about Friendship
- “Be a helpful friend, and you will become a green tree with always new fruit, always deeper journeys into love.” – Rumi
- “Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.” – Rumi
- “Take someone who doesn’t keep score, who’s not looking to be richer, or afraid of losing, who has not the slightest interest even in his own personality: he’s free.” – Rumi
- “Friend, our closeness is this: anywhere you put your foot, feel me in the firmness under you.” – Rumi
- “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.” – Rumi
- “If you are looking for a friend who is faultless, you will be friendless.” – Rumi
- “Be with those who help your being.” – Rumi
- “Oh my friend, all that you see of me is a shell, the rest belongs to love.” – Rumi
- “I love my friends neither with my heart nor with my mind. Just in case… Heart might stop. Mind can forget. I love them with my soul. Soul never stops or forgets.” – Rumi
- “Listen! Clam up your mouth and be silent like an oyster shell, for that tongue of yours is the enemy of the soul, my friend. When the lips are silent, the heart has a hundred tongues.” – Rumi
- “God is the only Friend for the Soul on the Way to God.” – Rumi
- “Once a beloved asked her lover: “Friend, You have seen many places in the world! Now – which of all these cities was the best? He said: “The city where my sweetheart lives!” – Rumi
- “Stay together, friends. Don’t scatter and sleep. Our friendship is made of being awake.” – Rumi
- “Don’t complain about autumn. Walk with grief like a good friend. Listen to what he says. Sometimes the cold and dark of a cave give the opening we most want.” – Rumi
- “From Myself I am copper, through You, friend, I am gold. From myself I’m a stone, but through You, I am a gem!” – Rumi
Conclusion
Rumi’s musings with love, life, inner beauty, and friendship are huge. And covering everything in one post could simply be close to impossible. Have we missed any of your favorite Rumi quotes? Please leave a comment and share it with us.
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