The Illuminated Rumi by Coleman Barks

All quotes from Coleman's book

You sit here for days saying, This is strange business.  You're the strange business.  You have the energy of the sun in you, but you keep knotting it up at the base of your spine.

Listen to the story told by the reed of being separated.  Since I was cut from the reed bed I have made this crying sound.  Anyone separated from someone he loves understands what I say: Anyone pulled from a source longs to go back.

Don’t move the way fear makes you move.

We all know things that get better when we pay attention to the breath.  We're more in the moment, more present, more true.  There are things to do. Enlightenment unfolds as it will, but there are ways to become more accessible  to it.  Practices. Meditation. Vigils. Fasting. Walks. What you give time and attention to.

Don't pray to be healed, or look for evidence of "some other world".  You are the soul and medicine for what wounds the soul.

Be source. Not result.

Rumi’s Little Book of Love and Laughter by Coleman Barks

All quotes from Coleman’s book

May God cause you to change your life in the way you know you should.  

I am not contained by this Universe. If every tip of every hair on me could speak, I still couldn’t say my gratitude. In the middle of streets and gardens, I stand and say and say again, and it’s all I say, “I wish everyone could know what I know”. 

Fear is an attribute of those who think they serve God. 

Having the idea is not living the reality. 

These pains you feel are Messengers. Listen to them.  Turn them to sweetness. The night is almost over.  You were young once, and content, now you think about money all the time you used to be that money.  You were a healthy vine. 

Many demolitions are actually renovations. 

There is a way that leads from all---colors to colorlessness. Know that the magnificient variety of the clouds and the weather comes from the total simplicity of the sun and the moon. 

One way of seeing sees only a road. Another sees a home. It’s always home. 

Be patient. Respond to every call that excites your spirit. Ignore those that make you fearful and sad, that degrade you back toward disease and death. 

To be clearer: part of a True Person is inside Time, and part is beyond Time. The Time-part dies. The Other is the Good Friend of Forever.