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Art
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Inside you there's an artist you don't know about. He's not interested in how things look different in moonlight.
-Rumi
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Beauty
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Let the beauty we love be what we do.
-Rumi
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Death
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I spent millons of years in the world
of inorganic things
as a star, as a rock...
Then I died and became a plant--
Forgetting my former existence
because of its otherness
Then I died and became an animal--
Forgetting my life as a plant
except for inclinations in the season
of spring and sweet herbs--
like the inclination of babes
toward their mother's breast
Then I died and became a human
My intelligence ripened, awakening
from greed and self-seeking
to become wise and knowing
I behold a hundred thousand
intelligences most marvelous
and remember my former states
and inclinations
And when I die again
I will soar past the angels
to places I cannot imagine
Now, what have I ever lost by dying?
-Rumi, What Have I Ever Lost By Dying?
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I died a mineral, and became a plant. I died a plant and rose an animal. I died an animal and I was man. Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?
-Rumi
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Dreams
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The dust of many crumbled cities settles over us like a forgetful doze, but we are older than those cities. We began as a mineral. We emerged into plant life and into the animal state, and then into being human, and always we have forgotten our former states, except in early spring when we slightly recall being green again. That's how a young person turns toward a teacher. That's how a baby leans toward the breast, without knowing the secret of its desire, yet turning instinctively. Humankind is being led along an evolving course, through this migration of intelligences, and though we seem to be sleeping, there is an inner wakefulness that directs the dream, and that will eventually startle us back to the truth of who we are.
-Rumi, The Dream That Must Be Interpreted
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Heart
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Everyone sees the unseen in proportion to the clarity of his heart, and that depends upon how much he has polished it. Whoever has polished it more sees more -- more unseen forms become manifest to him.
-Rumi
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Love
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Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy, absent-minded. Someone sober will worry about events going badly. Let the lover be.
-Rumi
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Only from the heart Can you touch the sky.
-Rumi
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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.
-Rumi
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Pleasure
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You are quaffing drink from a hundred fountains: whenever any of these hundred yields less, your pleasure is diminished. But when the sublime fountain gushes from within you, no longer need you steal from the other fountains.
-Rumi
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Reason
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Reason is like an officer when the king appears. The officer then loses his power and hides himself. Reason is the shadow cast by God; Go is the sun.
-Rumi
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Spirituality
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Pilgrimage to the place of the wise is to find escape from the flame of separateness.
-Rumi
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Return from existence to nonexistence. You are seeking the Lord and you belong to him. Nonexistence is a place of income; flee it not. This existence of more and less is a place of expenditure.
-Rumi
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Time
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The Eternal looked upon me for a moment with His eye of power, and annihilated me in His being, and become manifest to me in His essence. I saw I existed through Him.
-Rumi
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Books by and about Rumi