The Essential Rumi - reissue: New Expanded Edition

The body is a device to calculate the astronomy of the spirit.

Be melting snow. Wash yourself of yourself.

Here’s the new rule: break the wineglass, and fall toward the glassblower’s breath. This that is tormented and very tired, tortured with restraints like a madman, this heart. Still you keep breaking the shell to get the taste of its kernel!

Any wine will get you high. Judge like a king, and choose the purest,

Lo, I am with you always means when you look for God, God is in the look of your eyes, in the thought of looking, nearer to you than your self, or things that have happened to you There’s no need to go outside.

Be empty of worrying. Think of who created thought!

A white flower grows in the quietness. Let your tongue become that flower.

When acts of helplessness become habitual, those are the signs.

Thirst drove me down to the water where I drank the moon’s reflection. Now I am a lion staring up totally lost in love with the thing itself.