Dahlia > Dahlia's Quotes

“You dance inside my chest,
where no one sees you,

but sometimes I do, and that
sight becomes this art.”
― Rumi

“I will soothe you and heal you,
I will bring you roses.
I too have been covered with thorns.”
― Rumi

“Shams, my body is a candle touched with fire.”
― Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi, Night and Sleep

“If there were no way into God, I would not have lain in the grave of this body so long.”
― Rumi

“Some Hindus have an elephant to show.
No one here has ever seen an elephant.
They bring it at night to a dark room.

One by one, we go in the dark and come out
saying how we experience the animal.
One of us happens to touch the trunk.
A water-pipe kind of creature.

Another, the ear. A strong, always moving
back and forth, fan-animal. Another, the leg.
I find it still, like a column on a temple.

Another touches the curve back.
A leathery throne. Another, the cleverest,
feels the tusk. A rounded sword made of porcelain.
He is proud of his description.

Each of us touches one place
and understands the whole in that way.
The palm and the fingers feeling in the dark
are how the senses explore the reality of the elephant.

If each of us held a candle there,
and if we went in together, we could see it.”
― Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi, A Year with Rumi: Daily Readings

“Be helpless, dumbfounded,
Unable to say yes or no.
Then a stretcher will come from grace
to gather us up.

We are too dull-eyed to see that beauty.
If we say we can, we’re lying.
If we say No, we don’t see it,
That No will behead us
And shut tight our window onto spirit.

So let us rather not be sure of anything,
Beside ourselves, and only that, so
Miraculous beings come running to help.
Crazed, lying in a zero circle, mute,
We shall be saying finally,
With tremendous eloquence, Lead us.
When we have totally surrendered to that beauty,
We shall be a mighty kindness.”
― Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi

“A craftsman pulled a reed from the reedbed,
cut holes in it, and called it a human being.

Since then, it's been wailing a tender agony
of parting, never mentioning the skill
that gave it life as a flute”
― Rumi Jalalu'l-Din

“A wealth you cannot imagine
flows through you.
Do not consider what strangers say.
Be secluded in your secret heart-house,
that bowl of silence.”
― Rumi

“For the thirst to possess your love,
Is worth my blood a hundred times.”
― Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi, Love: The Joy That Wounds: The Love Poems of Rumi

“We may know who we are or we may not. We may be Muslims, Jews or Christians but until our hearts become the mould for every heart we will see only our differences.”
― Rumi

“This is how I would die
into the love I have for you:
As pieces of cloud
dissolve in sunlight.”
― Rumi

“Love isn't the work of the tender and the gentle;
Love is the work of wrestlers.
The one who becomes a servant of lovers
is really a fortunate sovereign.
Don't ask anyone about Love; ask Love about Love.
Love is a cloud that scatters pearls.”
― Rumi Jalalu'l-Din

“Lovers find secret places
inside this violent world
where they make transactions
with beauty.”
― Rumi

“Everything you possess of skill, and wealth, and handicraft,
wasn't it first merely a thought and a quest?”
― Rumi Jalalu'l-Din

“The ear participates, and helps arrange marriages;
the eye has already made love with what it sees.

The eye knows pleasure, delights in the body's shape:
the ear hears words that talk about all this.

When hearing takes place, character areas change;
but when you see, inner areas change.

If all you know about fire is what you have heard
see if the fire will agree to cook you!

Certain energies come only when you burn.
If you long for belief, sit down in the fire!

When the ear receives subtly; it turns into an eye.
But if words do not reach the ear in the chest, nothing happens.”
― Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi, Night and Sleep

“Be quiet now and wait.
It may be that the ocean one,
the one we desire so to move into and become,
desires us out here on land a little longer,
going our sundry roads to the shore.”
― Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi

“You think of yourself
as a citizen of the universe.
You think you belong
to this world of dust and matter.
Out of this dust
you have created a personal image,
and have forgotten
about the essence of your true origin”
― Rumi, Hush, Don't Say Anything to God: Passionate Poems of Rumi

“در غم ما روزها بی گاه شد
روزها با سوزها همراه شد”
― مولانا جلال الدین بلخی

“The world's flattery and hypocrisy is a sweet morsel:
eat less of it, for it is full of fire.
Its fire is hidden while its taste is manifest,
but its smoke becomes visible in the end. ”
― Rumi Jalalu'l-Din

“Do you know what you are?
You are a manuscript oƒ a divine letter.
You are a mirror reflecting a noble face.
This universe is not outside of you.
Look inside yourself;
everything that you want,
you are already that.”
― Rumi, Hush, Don't Say Anything to God: Passionate Poems of Rumi

“No more words. In the name of this place we drink in with our breathing, stay quiet like a flower.
So the nightbirds will start singing.”
― Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi, Night and Sleep

“Moonlight floods the whole sky from horizon to horizon;
How much it can fill your room depends on its windows.”
― Rumi, The Essential Rumi

“Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place.”
― Rumi

“Oh sky, without me, do not change,
Oh moon, without me, do not shine;
Oh earth, without me, do not grow,
Oh time, without me, do not go.

...Oh, you cannot go, without me.”
― Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi, Love: The Joy That Wounds: The Love Poems of Rumi

“The rose's rarest essence lives in the thorns.”
― Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi

“Love calls - everywhere and always.
We're sky bound.
Are you coming?”
― Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi

“For without you, I swear, the town
Has become like a prison to me.
Distraction and the mountain
And the desert, all I desire.”
― Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi, Love: The Joy That Wounds: The Love Poems of Rumi

“Oh soul,
you worry too much.
You have seen your own strength.
You have seen your own beauty.
You have seen your golden wings.
Of anything less,
why do you worry?
You are in truth
the soul, of the soul, of the soul.”
― Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi

“When someone beats a rug,
the blows are not against the rug,
but against the dust in it.”
― Rumi Jalalu'l-Din

“I was dead, then alive.
Weeping, then laughing.

The power of love came into me,
and I became fierce like a lion,
then tender like the evening star.”
― Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi