My dear heart, never think you are better than others. Listen to their sorrows with compassion. If you want peace, don't harbor bad thoughts, do not gossip and don't teach what you do not know.
RumiRead
What does this patch-sewing mean you ask? Eating and drinking. The heavy cloak of the body is always getting torn. You patch it with food and other ego-satisfactions.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Rumi suggests that physical sustenance and pleasures serve as temporary fixes for our deeper insecurities and vulnerabilities.
In this quote, Rumi uses the metaphor of patch-sewing to illustrate how we try to mend our existential or emotional wounds through the consumption of food and other ego-satisfying experiences. He argues that while these pleasures can provide a momentary sense of fulfillment, they are ultimately superficial solutions to the deeper issues related to our physical and emotional existence.
Themes
FoodPleasureBodyEgoSatisfaction
In practice
Example use cases
During a philosophical discussion about the nature of happiness, one might quote Rumi to illustrate how we often seek comfort in temporary pleasures.
More from Rumi
All quotes βThe Law of Wonder rules my life at last, _x000D_ ...I burn each second of my life to Love _x000D_ Each second of my life burns out in Love _x000D_ In each leaping second Love lives afresh.
RumiRead
Lovers have heartaches _x000D_ That can't be cured by drugs _x000D_ Or sleep, _x000D_ Or games, _x000D_ But only by seeing their beloved.
RumiRead
Every fragile beauty, every perfect forgotten sentence, you grieve their going away, but that is not how it is. Where they come from never goes dry. It is an always flowing spring.
RumiRead
Whatever you keep hidden in your heart, God _x000D_ manifests in you outwardly. Whatever the root of _x000D_ the tree feeds on in secret, affects the bough and _x000D_ the leaf.
RumiRead
Come on sweetheart let's adore one another before there is no more of you and me
RumiRead
Similar quotes
Religion is the opiate of the people.
Karl MarxRead
If there be light, then there is darkness; if cold, heat; if height, depth; if solid, fluid; if hard, soft; if rough, smooth; if calm, tempest; if prosperity, adversity; if life, death.
PythagorasRead
We need autocracies and failing democracies alike to understand that they cannot scapegoat LGBT citizens to distract from their own shortcomings.
Kerry KennedyRead
I dream that I have found us both again, With spring so many strangers' lives away, And we, so free, Out walking by the sea, With someone else's paper words to say.... They took us at the gates of green return, Too lost by then to stop, and ask them why- Do children meet again? Does any trace remain, Along the superhighways of July?
Thomas PynchonRead
Two kinds of people live a life without care: one kind are extremely worthy of praise, the other kind are extremely worthy of criticism. The first are those who care nothing for the pleasures of the world and the second (i.e. those who are deserving of criticism) care nothing for haya or modesty.
Ibn HazmRead
One will seldom go wrong if one attributes extreme actions to vanity, average ones to habit, and pretty ones to fear.
Friedrich NietzscheRead