Rumi

Doing as others told me, I was blind. Coming when others called me, I was lost. Then I left everyone, myself as well. Then I found myself, myself as well.

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

Be like a tree and let the dead leaves drop.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

If all you can do is crawl, start crawling.

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

Patience makes lighter What sorrow may not heal.

The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.

Don’t order any black things. Rejoice in his memory; and be radiant: leave grief to the children. Wear violet and purple. Be patient with the poor people who will snivel: they don’t know; and they think they will live for ever, which makes death a division instead of a bond.

The universe seems bankrupt as soon as we begin to discuss the characters of individuals.

We run to win, not just to be in the race.

Life is largely a matter of expectation.

Attention and respect give pleasure, however late, or however useless. But they are not useless, when they are late, it is reasonable to rejoice, as the day declines, to find that it has been spent with the approbation of mankind.

Real love begins when nothing is expected in return.

If a man owns land, the land owns him.

People usually think according to their inclinations, speak according to their learning and ingrained opinions, but generally act according to custom.

We live thick and are in each other’s way, and stumble over one another, and I think we thus lose some respect for one another.

For every why he had a wherefore.

I recall a most ingenious piece in a Wisconsin quarterly some years ago in which ‘The Recognitions’ ’ debt to ‘Ulysses’ was established in such minute detail I was doubtful of my own firm recollection of never having read ‘Ulysses.

If there is any period one would desire to be born in, is it not the age of Revolution; when the old and the new stand side by side, and admit of being compared; when the energies of all men are searched by fear and by hope; when the historic glories of the old can be compensated by the rich possibilities of the new era?

I heartily accept the motto,That government is best which governs least; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which I also believe,That government is best which governs not at all; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient.