My dear heart, never think you are better than others. Listen to their sorrows with compassion. If you want peace, don't harbor bad thoughts, do not gossip and don't teach what you do not know.
RumiRead
Your hand opens and closes, opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralysed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birds' wings.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Balance in life is essential; we must engage in both openness and closing to thrive.
This quote by Rumi emphasizes the importance of balance in our lives. The act of opening and closing, whether in relationships, experiences, or emotions, represents the dualities we must navigate. Just as our hands cannot remain permanently closed or open without consequence, our lives require a harmony between giving and receiving, action and stillness, which is crucial for personal and spiritual growth.
Themes
BalanceLifeGrowthDualityOpennessClosing
In practice
Example use cases
During a motivational speech about resilience and adaptability.
More from Rumi
All quotes →The Law of Wonder rules my life at last, _x000D_ ...I burn each second of my life to Love _x000D_ Each second of my life burns out in Love _x000D_ In each leaping second Love lives afresh.
RumiRead
Lovers have heartaches _x000D_ That can't be cured by drugs _x000D_ Or sleep, _x000D_ Or games, _x000D_ But only by seeing their beloved.
RumiRead
Every fragile beauty, every perfect forgotten sentence, you grieve their going away, but that is not how it is. Where they come from never goes dry. It is an always flowing spring.
RumiRead
Whatever you keep hidden in your heart, God _x000D_ manifests in you outwardly. Whatever the root of _x000D_ the tree feeds on in secret, affects the bough and _x000D_ the leaf.
RumiRead
Come on sweetheart let's adore one another before there is no more of you and me
RumiRead
Similar quotes
You see many stars in the sky at night, but not when the sun rises. Can you therefore say that there are no stars in the heavens during the day? Because you cannot find God in the days of your ignorance, say not that there is no God.
RamakrishnaRead
If it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge.
William ShakespeareRead
The resistance to the unpleasant situation is the root of suffering.
Ram DassRead
The ordinary scientific man is strictly a sentimentalist. He is a sentimentalist in this essential sense, that he is soaked and swept away by mere associations.
Gilbert K. ChestertonRead
Even nothing cannot last forever.
Neil GaimanRead
We are not permitted to choose the frame of our destiny. But what we put into it is ours.
Dag HammarskjoldRead