Rumi

The pains you feel are messengers. Listen to them.

Be like a tree and let the dead leaves drop.

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

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.

The minute I heard my first love story I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.

If you want the moon, do not hide from the night. If you want a rose, do not hide from the thorns. If you want love, do not hide from yourself.

The intuitive recognition of the instant, thus reality… is the highest act of wisdom.

Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them.

What is once well done is done forever.

Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.

Knowledge always demands increase; it is like fire, which must first be kindled by some external agent, but will afterwards always propagate itself.

Responsibility is the price of greatness.

The noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees is the high road that leads him to England.

There is nothing so bad or so good that you will not find an Englishman doing it; but you will never find an Englishman in the wrong. He does everything on principle. He fights you on patriotic principles; he robs you on business principles; he enslaves you on imperial principles.

Happiness is a perfume which you cannot pour on someone without getting some on yourself.

A genius can never expect to have a good time anywhere, if he is a genuine article, but America is about the last place in which life will be endurable at all for an inspired writer of any kind.

A man is not finished when he is defeated. He is finished when he quits.

Those who attain any excellence, commonly spend life in one pursuit; for excellence is not often gained upon easier terms.

The avarice person is ever in want; let your desired aim have a fixed limit.

The pains you feel are messengers. Listen to them.

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.