Category: Quotes

25 Powerful Rumi Quotes

Rumi believed in using poetry and the expressive arts to connect with God. This is a list of powerful Rumi quotes from his works on love and healing.

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Rumi (born Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī) was a 13th-century Persian poet, theologian, scholar, and Sufi mystic. He believed in using poetry and the expressive arts to connect with God. His best-known work is the Maṭnawīye Ma’nawī (Spiritual Couplets), a six-volume poem that has been called “the Quran in Persian.”

This is a list of compelling quotes from Rumi’s works on love and healing. Theses Rumi quotes can be used as a therapeutic tool for clients to explore their own journey of love, suffering, and healing.

Scroll to the bottom for a printable PDF version of the Rumi quotes on cards.

For more powerful quotes, see 25 Powerful Quotes from the Dalai Lama and 25 Powerful Quotes About Addiction & Recovery.

25 Powerful Rumi Quotes on Love & Healing

1. Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.

2. Love risks everything and asks for nothing.

3. Wherever you are, and whatever you do, be in love.

4. Set your life on fire. Seek those who fan your flames.

5. You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens.

6. You were born with wings. Why prefer to crawl through life?

7. Why do you stay in prison, when the door is so wide open?

8. As you start to walk on the way, the way appears.

9. It’s your road, and yours alone. Others may walk it with you, but no one can walk it for you.

10. Look at the moon in the sky, not the one in the lake.

11. Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.

12. You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean, in a drop.

13. Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure.

14. The rose’s rarest essence lives in the thorns.

15. Your heart is the size of an ocean. Go find yourself in its hidden depths.

16. The cure for pain is in the pain.

17. Within tears, find hidden laughter. Seek treasures amid ruins.

18. These pains you feel are messengers. Listen to them.

19. In the blackest of your moments, wait with no fear.

20. The wound is the place where the Light enters you.

21. Shine like the whole universe is yours.

22. When the light returns to its source, it takes nothing of what it has illuminated.

23. Return to the root of the root of your own soul.

24. When will you begin that long journey into yourself?

25. Life is a balance of holding on and letting go.

Rumi Quote CardsDownload

25 Powerful Quotes from the Dalai Lama

Instructions for living from the Dalai Lama: A list of inspiring and powerful quotes

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This is a list of 25 powerful quotes from the Dalai Lama, the highest spiritual leader and head of the Tibet. These wise sayings can also be thought of as instructions for living. Scroll to the bottom of this post for a printable PDF of the quotes.

(For more quotes, see 25 Powerful Quotes About Addiction & Recovery and 25 Powerful Rumi Quotes.)

Instructions for Living from the Dalai Lama

1. Share your knowledge. It is a way to achieve immortality.

2. Once a year, go somewhere you’ve never been before.

3. Remember that sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck.

4. When you realize you’ve made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.

5. If there is no solution to the problem then don’t waste time worrying about it. If there is a solution to the problem then don’t waste time worrying about it.

6. We can never obtain peace in the outer world until we make peace with ourselves.

7. Someone else’s action should not determine your response.

8. Give the ones you love wings to fly, roots to come back, and reasons to stay.

9. Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.

10. Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.

11. Our prime purpose in this life is to help others, and if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them.

12. Happiness is not something readymade, it comes from your own actions.

13. If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.

14. Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.

15. If you have to choose between being kind and being right, choose being kind and you will always be right.

16. Just one small positive thought in the morning can change your whole day.

17. Choose to be optimistic, it feels better.

18. The more honest you are, the more open, the less fear you will have, because there’s no anxiety about being exposed or revealed to others.

19. Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.

20. It is under the greatest adversity that there exists the greatest potential for doing good, both for oneself and others.

21. When you talk, you are only repeating what you already know. But if you listen, you may learn something new.

22. Silence is sometimes the best answer.

23. With realization of one’s own potential and self-confidence in one’s ability, one can build a better world.

24. Never give up. No matter what is going on. Never give up.

25. Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively.

Instructions for LivingDownload

25 Powerful Quotes About Addiction & Recovery

A list of 25 powerful and compelling quotes about addiction and recovery that are relatable, darkly funny, and inspiring.

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This is a list of quotes about addiction, suffering, and hope that spoke to me – as an addictions professional – as well as on a human level.

These quotes about addiction are raw and relatable, with perhaps my favorites being from the memoir Drinking: A Love Story, in which the author, Caroline Knapp, bares her soul so compellingly that she becomes a kindred spirit in her vulnerability. Carrie Fisher also has a way with words, frank and darkly witty on the topic of addiction.

Read on for quotes about addiction from famous actors, singers, writers, sex workers, and more.

Quotes about addiction: on why people become addicted…

“And then I realized I was high. I loved the sensation. It felt like medicine to soothe the soul and awaken the senses. There was nothing awkward or scary – I didn’t feel like I had lost control – in fact, I felt like I was in control.”

Anthony Kiedis (Founder & Lead Vocalist of the Red Hot Chili Peppers)

“Drugs don’t really fix anything, except for everything.”

— Ashly Lorenzana (American Sex Worker, Freelance Writer, & Writer of the Memoir Sex, Drugs & Being an Escort)

“The priority of any addict is to anaesthetize the pain of living to ease the passage of day with some purchased relief.”

Russell Brand (English Comedian, Actor, & Author of My Booky Wook)

“To a drinker the sensation is real and pure and akin to something spiritual: you seek; in the bottle, you find.”

Caroline Knapp (American Writer & Author of Drinking: A Love Story)

On what it’s like having an addiction…

“It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom.”

Edgar Allan Poe (American Writer, Poet, & Literary Critic)

“The attempt to escape from pain, is what creates more pain.”

Gabor Maté (Canadian Physician & Author of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction)

“Imagine trying to live without air.
Now imagine something worse.”

Amy Reed (American Author)

“Drugs are a sort of dusk that grant us the illusion that we’re the ones who decide when the light goes out, but that power never belongs to us. The darkness takes us whenever it likes.”

Fredrik Backman (Swedish Author, Blogger, & Columnist)

“If you have a need to be comfortable all the time—well, among other things, you have the makings of a classic drug addict or alcoholic.”

— Carrie Fisher (American Actress & Writer)

“If you’re one of us, the bottle takes your shit, that’s all. First a little, then a lot, then everything.”

Stephen King (Best-selling American Author, the “King of Horror”)

“I drank when I was happy and I drank when I was anxious and I drank when I was bored and I drank when I was depressed, which was often.”

Caroline Knapp

“I’ve been asleep and I don’t know if it’s the same day or week or year, but who the hell cares anyway?”

Beatrice Sparks (American Author, Mormon Youth Counselor, & Hoaxer)

Dark humor…

“Reality is just a crutch for people who can’t handle drugs.”

Robin Williams (American Actor & Comedian)

“I used to have a drug problem, now I make enough money.”

David Lee Roth (American Singer, Songwriter, & Original Lead Vocalist of Van Halen)

“An alcoholic will steal your wallet and lie to you. A drug addict will steal your wallet and then help you look for it.”

David Sheff (American Author)

Karl Marx:

“Religion is the opiate of the masses.”

Carrie Fisher:

“I did masses of opiates religiously.”

— Postcards from the Edge

“Selling my soul would be a lot easier if I could just find it.”

Nikki Sixx (Co-founder, Bassist, & Primary Songwriter for Mötley Crüe)

“People are a lot easier to be around when they’re not tweaking out on meth.”

Joe Exotic (“The Tiger King”)

“And in my mind, this settles the issue. I would never drink cologne, and am therefore not an alcoholic.”

Augusten Burroughs (American Author & Screenwriter)

Quotes about addiction: on quitting and recovery…

“[Crystal methamphetamine] was the hardest boyfriend I ever had to break up with.”

Fergie (American Singer/Rapper, Songwriter, & Actress)

“Your addiction is not your identity, but you won’t know that until you’re in recovery; that’s when the two separate.”

Toni Sorenson (American Author)

“The opposite of addiction isn’t sobriety. It’s connection.”

— Johann Hari (Journalist, Writer, & Admitted Plagiarist)

“Getting sober was one of the three pivotal events in my life, along with becoming an actor and having a child. Of the three, finding my sobriety was the hardest.”

Gary Oldman (English Actor & Filmmaker)

“When you quit drinking, you stop waiting.”

— Caroline Knapp

“Recovery is an acceptance that your life is in shambles and you have to change it.”

Jamie Lee Curtis (American Actress, Producer, & Author)

Share your favorite quotes about addiction and recovery in a comment!