What Rumi and Khalil Gibran Would Tell Us About Love

I have selected 60 excerpts from poems infused with the mystic wisdom of two greatly gifted poets, Persian Jalal al-Din Rumi and Lebanese Khalil Gibran. Their work speaks of the ecstasy of romantic love, the unconditionality of true acceptance, the devotion associated with seeking truth in life, and the beauty of human nature, while transcending time, countries, religions and languages.

The focus of the poems that appear below is on savoring the sweetness born out of the exchange of love between two souls. My wish for you is that in reading them you will be able to awaken and unfold your own deepest love so that you may share it fully, and that you will be persuaded to fearlessly yield to what your heart compels. I hope that, ultimately, Rumi and Gibran’s poetic gems have an uncontrollable positive impact in your lives, as meaningful poetry unequivocally does.

Yield to the Strange Magic

1. «When love itself comes to kiss you, don’t hold back!» — Rumi

2. «Do you have memory of the day we met, when the halo of your spirit surrounded us, and the angels of love floated about, singing the praise of the soul’s deed?» — Khalil Gibran

3. «Love is sufficient unto love. And think not that you can direct the course of love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.» — Khalil Gibran

4. «Submit to love without thinking.» — Rumi

5. «Love is reckless; not reason. Reason seeks a profit. Love comes on strong, consuming herself, unabashed.» — Rumi

6. «When love beckons to you, follow him.» — Khalil Gibran

7. «Gamble everything for love, if you are a true human being. If not, leave this gathering. Half-heartedness doesn’t reach into majesty.» — Rumi

Allow Love to Change It All

8. «I was dead, then alive. Weeping, then laughing. The power of love came into me, and I became fierce like a lion, then tender like the evening star.» — Rumi

9. «This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First, to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without fear.» — Rumi

10. «Love makes the ocean boil like a pot. Love grinds mountains down to sand. Love splits the heaven into a hundred pieces. Love shakes the earth with a mighty shaking…If not for pure love, why would I give existence to the spheres? I raised the Celestial wheel on the high so that you might understand love’s elevation.» — Rumi

11. «Out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing, there is a field. I will meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.» — Rumi

12.»How often have you sailed in my dreams? And now you come in my awakening, which is my deeper dream.» — Khalil Gibran

Dissipate the Confusion

13. «Love and doubt have never been on speaking terms.» — Khalil Gibran

14. «Look for the answer inside your question.» — Rumi

15. «Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and the nights.» — Khalil Gibran

16. «All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart.» — Rumi

17. «Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray.» — Rumi

18.»Only great sorrow or great joy can reveal your truth.» — Khalil Gibran

19.»Ride on love and don’t worry about the road! Because the steed of love has the smoothest ride. It will take you home in a single thrust. Even though the road is rough.» — Rumi

Merge Into Each Other

20.»Passion is the elixir that renews: how can there be weariness when passion is present?» — Rumi

21.»For to the bee a flower is a fountain of life, and to the flower a bee is a messenger of love, and to both, bee and flower, the giving and the receiving of pleasure is a need and an ecstasy.» — Khalil Gibran

22.»When I am with you, we stay up all night. When you are not here, I can’t go to sleep. Praise God for those two insomnias! And the difference between them.» — Rumi

23.»My sweet heart, you have aroused my passion. Your touch has filled me with desire. I am no longer separate from you. These are precious moments. I beseech you, do not make me wait.» — Rumi

24.»Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield, upon which your reason and your judgment wage war against your passion and your appetite … you should rest in reason and move in passion.» — Khalil Gibran

25. «I want to see you. Know your voice. Recognize you when you first come around the corner. Sense your scent when I come into a room you have just left. Know the lift of your heel, the glide of your foot. Become familiar with the way you purse your lips then let them part, just the slightest bit, when I lean in to your space and kiss you. I want to know the joy of how you whisper ‘more.'» — Rumi

26.»Oftentimes in denying yourself pleasure, you do but store the desire in the recesses of your being. Who knows but that which seems omitted today, waits for tomorrow? Even your body knows its heritage and its rightful need and will not be deceived. And your body is the harp of your soul. And it is yours to bring forth sweet music from it or confused sounds.» — Khalil Gibran

27.»I closed my mouth and spoke to you in a hundred silent ways.» — Rumi

28.»My love for you has driven me insane. I wander aimlessly the ruins of my life, my old self a stranger to me. Because of your love I have broken with my past. My longing for you keeps me in this moment. My passion gives me courage. I look for you in my innermost being.» — Rumi

29.»With passion, pray. With passion, work. With passion, make love. With passion, eat and drink and dance and play. Why look like a dead fish in this ocean of God?» — Rumi

30.»My cries of longing, my wails of sorrow are tormenting my soul, you wait patiently, looking into my intoxicated eyes, you accept my passion with the serenity of love, you are the master of existence. One day I shall be a lover like you.» — Rumi

31.»My heart is burning with love, all can see this flame. My heart is pulsing with passion like waves on an ocean.» — Rumi

Balance Separation and Togetherness

32.»Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because for those who love with heart and soul there is no such thing as separation.» — Rumi

33.»And ever has it been known that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.» — Khalil Gibran

34.»Where are you now, my beloved? Do you hear my weeping from beyond the ocean? Do you understand my need? Do you know the greatness of my patience?» — Rumi

35.»Let there be spaces in your togetherness, and let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.» — Khalil Gibran

36.»Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone.» — Khalil Gibran

37.»When you part from your love, you grieve not. For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.» — Khalil Gibran

38.»If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. And if they don’t, they never were.» — Khalil Gibran

39.»Love possesses not nor will it be possessed.» — Khalil Gibran

Give Love

40. «My heart refuses to deny you its secret.» — Khalil Gibran

41.»You often say, ‘I would give, but only to the deserving.’ The trees in your orchard say not so, nor the flocks in your pastures. They give that they may live, for to withhold is to perish. Surely he who is worthy to receive his days and his nights, is worthy of all else from you.» — Khalil Gibran

42.»The Master who is full of sweetness is so drunk with love, he is oblivious. Will you give me some of your sweetness? I have none, he says, unaware of his richness.» — Rumi

43.»You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.» — Khalil Gibran

44.»It is good to give when asked, but it is better to give unasked through understanding.» — Khalil Gibran

Deal With the Ups and Downs

45.»Accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields. And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.» — Khalil Gibran

46. «Good and bad are mixed. If you don’t have both, you don’t belong with us.» — Rumi

47. «When you are sorrowful, look again in your heart, and you shall see that, in truth, you are weeping for that which has been your delight.» — Khalil Gibran

48.»God turns you from one feeling to another and teaches by means of opposites, so that you will have two wings to fly, not one.» — Rumi

49.»For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning. Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your most tender branches that quiver in the sun. So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.» — Khalil Gibran

Be on Cloud Nine

50.»Love is quivering happiness.» — Khalil Gibran

51.»They have left behind the world of deceitful games. They are the privileged lovers
who create a new world with their eyes of fiery passion.» — Rumi

52.»Demonstrations of love are small, compared with the great thing that is back of them.» — Khalil Gibran

53.»I am so happy in your happiness.» — Khalil Gibran

54.»A moment of happiness, you and I sitting on the verandah, apparently two, but one in soul, you and I. We feel the flowing water of life here, you and I, with the garden’s beauty and the birds singing. The stars will be watching us, and we will show them what it is to be a thin crescent moon. You and I unselfed, will be together, indifferent to idle speculation, you and I. The parrots of heaven will be cracking sugar as we laugh together, you and I. In one form upon this earth, and in another form in a timeless sweet land.» — Rumi

Till the Ever After of No time or Space

55.»Love is the vital core of the soul. And of all you see, only love is infinite.» — Rumi

56. «And if our hands should meet in another dream, we shall build another tower in the sky.» — Khalil Gibran

57.»Love is from the infinite, and will remain until eternity.» — Rumi

58.»I shall love you to eternity. I loved you long before we met in this flesh. I knew that when I first saw you. It was destiny. We are together like this and nothing can shake us apart.» — Khalil Gibran

59.»Trust in dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.» — Khalil Gibran

60.»You and I will be together till the universe dissolves.» — Rumi