• The middle path is the way to wisdom.
• Don’t allow your animal nature to rule your reason.
• Know that a word suddenly shot from the tongue is like an arrow shot from the bow. Son, that arrow won’t turn back on its way; you must damn the torrent at its source.
• Indeed envy is a defect; worse than any other.
• The intelligent want self-control; children want candy.
• This discipline and rough treatment is a furnace to extract the silver from the dross. This testing purifies the gold by boiling the scum away.
• You think the shadow is the substance.
• If you are irritated by every rub, how will you be polished?
• Be occupied, then, with what you really value and let the thief take something else.
• This place is a dream. Only a sleeper considers it real.
• 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.
• No mirror ever became iron again; No bread ever became wheat; No ripened grape ever became sour fruit. Mature yourself and be secure from a change for the worse.  Become the light.
• “Beware! Don’t allow yourself to do what you know is wrong, relying on the thought, Later I will repent and ask God’s forgiveness.”
• No prayer is complete without presence.
• Brothers stand the pain; Escape the poison of your impulses. The sky will bow to your beauty, if you do. Learn to light the candle. Rise with the sun. Turn away from the cave of your sleeping. That way a thorn expands to a rose. A particular glows with the universal.
• Burdens are the foundations of ease and bitter things the forerunners of pleasure.
• Conventional opinion is the ruin of our souls.
• Don’t let your throat tighten with fear. Take sips of breath all day and night, before death closes your mouth.
• Everyone is so afraid of death, but the real Sufis just laugh: nothing tyrannizes their hearts. What strikes the oyster shell does not damage the pearl.
• Everything in the universe is a pitcher brimming with wisdom and beauty.
• Fasting is the first principle of medicine.
• He is a letter to everyone. You open it. It says, Live!
• If your knowledge of fire has been turned to certainty by words alone, then seek to be cooked by the fire itself. Don’t abide in borrowed certainty. There is no real certainty until you burn; if you wish for this, sit down in the fire.
• It is God’s kindness to terrify you in order to lead you to safety.
• Let’s ask God to help us to self-control for one who lacks it, lacks his grace.
• Loosen the bonds of avarice from your hands and neck.
• O, happy the soul that saw its own faults.
• On the way there is no harder pass than this: fortunate is he who does not carry envy as a companion.
• Paradise is surrounded by what we dislike; the fires of hell are surrounded by what we desire.
• Patience is the key to joy.
• People of the world don’t look at themselves, and so they blame one another.
• Revile those who flatter you.
• Since in order to speak, one must first listen, learn to speak by listening.
• Stay with friends who support you in these. Talk with them about sacred texts, and how you are doing, and how they are doing, and keep your practices together.
• That which is false troubles the heart, but truth brings joyous tranquility.
• The beginning of pride and hatred lies in worldly desire, and the strength of your desire if from habit. When an evil tendency becomes confirmed by habit, rage is triggered when anyone restrains you.
• The lion who breaks the enemy’s ranks is a minor hero compared to the lion who overcomes himself.
• The rain-weeping and the sun burning twine together to make us grow. Keep your intelligence white-hot and your grief glistening, so your life will stay fresh. Cry easily like a little child.
• When the remedy you have offered only increases the disease, then leave him who will not be cured, and tell your story to someone who seeks the truth.
• When your heart becomes the grave of your secrets, that desire of yours will be gained more quickly. The prophet said that anyone who keeps secret his inmost thought will soon attain the object of his desire. When seeds are buried in the earth, their inward secrets become the flourishing garden.
  

 – Mevlana Rumi