Rumi

Beauty surrounds us, but usually we need to be walking in a garden to know it.

The quieter you become, you more you are able to hear.

I am neither of the East nor of the West, no boundaries exist within my breast.

Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.

When setting out on a journey, do not seek advice from those who have never left home.

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

Everything’s fine today, that is our illusion.

I always forgive others. The anger; sadness; frustration; pain, whatever feelings I felt, no matter the hurt; the tears, I always found understanding and reason to forgive them; to not hold onto it; to not resent them. But there is one, who I never seem to be able to give absolution, and that’s myself.

Death then, being the way and condition of life, we cannot love to live if we cannot bear to die.

Danger – if you meet it promptly and without flinching – you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!

We do not learn by inference and deduction and the application of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse and sympathy.

Each of us has the right and the responsibility to asses the road which lie ahead and those over which we have traveled, and if the feature road looms ominous or unpromising, and the road back uninviting-inviting, then we need to gather our resolve and carrying only the necessary baggage, step off that road into another direction. If the new choice is also unpalatable, without embarrassment, we must be ready to change that one as well.

If you have only one smile in you give it to the people you love.

No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, an endless seeker, with no past at my back.

I believe in things that are developed through hard work. I always like people who have developed long and hard, especially through introspection and a lot of dedication. I think what they arrive at is usually a much deeper and more beautiful thing than the person who seems to have that ability and fluidity from the beginning. I say this because it’s a good message to give to young talents who feel as I used to.

Don’t think of retiring from the world until the world will be sorry that you retire. I hate a fellow whom pride or cowardice or laziness drive into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl. Let him come out as I do, and bark.

The presence of a noble nature, generous in its wishes, ardent in its charity, changes the lights for us: we begin to see things again in their larger, quieter masses, and to believe that we too can be seen and judged in the wholeness of our character.

George Washington, as a boy, was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie.

The person that had took a bull by the tail once had learnt sixty or seventy times as much as a person that hadn’t, and said a person that started in to carry a cat home by the tail was getting knowledge that was always going to be useful to him, and warn’t ever going to grow dim or doubtful. Chances are, he isn’t likely to carry the cat that way again, either. But if he wants to, I say let him!

A short letter to a distant friend is, in my opinion, an insult like that of a slight bow or cursory salutation — a proof of unwillingness to do much, even where there is a necessity of doing something.

Today is the oldest you’ve ever been, and the youngest you’ll ever be again.