Rumi
Rumi
Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī, also known as Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhī, Mawlānā/Mevlânâ, Mevlevî/Mawlawī, and more popularly simply as Rumi, was a 13th-century Persian poet, jurist, Islamic scholar, theologian, and Sufi mystic. Rumi's influence transcends national borders and ethnic divisions: Iranians, Tajiks, Turks, Greeks, Pashtuns, other Central Asian Muslims, and the Muslims of South Asia have greatly appreciated his spiritual legacy for the past seven centuries. His poems have been widely translated into many of the world's languages and transposed into...
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth30 September 1207
On the way there is no harder pass than this: fortunate is he who does not carry envy as a companion.
Indeed envy is a defect; worse than any other.
Achieve some perfection [excellence] yourself, so that you may not fall into sorrow by seeing the perfection in others.
Beg of God the removal of envy, that God may deliver you from externals, and bestow upon you an inward occupation, which will absorb you so that your attention is not drawn away.
I have blossomed so much, I am the envy of the gardens.
Your body is woven from the light of heaven. Are you aware that its purity and swiftness is the envy of angels and its courage keeps even devils away.
That which is false troubles the heart, but truth brings joyous tranquillity.
Listen! Clam up your mouth and be silent like an oyster shell, for that tongue of yours is the enemy of the soul, my friend. When the lips are silent, the heart has a hundred tongues.
This is what love does and continues to do. It tastes like honey to adults and milk to children.
I closed my mouth and spoke to you in a hundred silent ways.
With passion pray. With passion make love. With passion eat and drink and dance and play. Why look like a dead fish in this ocean of God?
I see my beauty in you.
Speak a new language so that the world will be a new world.
Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray.