Rumi

Be like a tree and let the dead leaves drop.

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

Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.

Woman is a ray of God. She is not that earthly beloved: she is creative, not created.

That which is false troubles the heart, but truth brings joyous tranquility.

Your depression is connected to your insolence and refusal to praise.

Society always consists in the greatest part, of young and foolish persons.

If in doubt, don’t. If still in doubt, do what’s right.

We have only now, only this single eternal moment opening and unfolding before us, day and night.

I never knew a writer yet who took the smallest pains with his style and was at the same time readable.

We never become really and genuinely our entire and honest selves until we are dead – and not then until we have been dead years and years. People ought to start dead and then they would be honest so much earlier.

He that will not apply new remedies, must expect new evils: for Time is the greatest innovator: and if Time, of course, alter things to the worse, and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better, what shall be the end?.

It is only through labour and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage; that we move on to better things.

Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I’ve done it thousands of times.

There can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity.

Men know that women are an over-match for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or most ignorant. If they did not think so, they never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves.

The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it.

The eye is easily frightened.

To be good is noble, but to teach others how to be good is nobler and less trouble.

God as now generally conceived of is only the last witch.

If I had no duties, and no reference to futurity, I would spend my life in driving briskly in a post-chaise with a pretty woman.