Rumi

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.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

Woman is a ray of God. She is not that earthly beloved: she is creative, not created.

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

Although the road is never ending, take a step and keep walking, do not look fearfully into the distance…on the path let the heart be your guide for the body is hesitant and full of fear.

Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.

This merriment of parsons is mighty offensive.

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts, but if he will content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.

You may drive out nature with a pitchfork, yet she’ll be constantly running back.

I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.

By all means let’s be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.

The results of life are uncalculated and uncalculable. The years teach much which the days never know. The persons who compose our company, converse, and come and go, and design and execute many things, and somewhat comes of it all, but an unlooked for result. The individual is always mistaken. He designed many things, and drew in other persons as coadjutors, quarrelled with some or all, blundered much, and something is done; all are a little advanced, but the individual is always mistaken. It turns out somewhat new, and very unlike what he promised himself.

To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.

Great works are performed not by strength, but by perseverance.

Iteration, like friction, is likely to generate heat instead of progress.

If there is any period one would desire to be born in, is it not the age of Revolution; when the old and the new stand side by side, and admit of being compared; when the energies of all men are searched by fear and by hope; when the historic glories of the old can be compensated by the rich possibilities of the new era?

No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned… a man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company.

Many heroes lived before Agamemnon; but all are unknown and unwept, extinguished in everlasting night, because they have no spirited chronicler.

The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it.

When I was praised I lost my time, for instantly I turned around to look at the work I had thought slightly of, and that day I made nothing new.

There are few virtues that the Poles do not possess and there are few errors they have ever avoided.