“Every object and being in the universe is
a jar overflowing with wisdom and beauty,
a drop of the Tigris that cannot be contained
by any skin.”
"The Gift of Water" Ch. 18 : The Three Fish, p. 200
The Essential Rumi (1995)
Context: Every object and being in the universe is
a jar overflowing with wisdom and beauty,
a drop of the Tigris that cannot be contained
by any skin. Every jarful spills and makes the earth
more shining, as though covered in satin.
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Rumi 148
Iranian poet 1207–1273Related quotes
“The cistern contains: the fountain overflows.”
Source: 1790s, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790–1793), Proverbs of Hell, Line 35
[Low, Frank, 2001, May, Obituary: Frederick Gillett (1937-2001), Nature, 411, 6840, 906]
“Be like the fountain that overflows, not like the cistern that merely contains.”
Source: Veronika Decides to Die
G. P. R. James Henry Masterton (1832; repr. London: Richard Bentley, 1837) p. 297
Misattributed
1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Compensation
Context: The universe is represented in every one of its particles. Every thing in nature contains all the powers of nature. Every thing is made of one hidden stuff; as the naturalist sees one type under every metamorphosis, and regards a horse as a running man, a fish as a swimming man, a bird as a flying man, a tree as a rooted man. Each new form repeats not only the main character of the type, but part for part all the details, all the aims, furtherances, hindrances, energies, and whole system of every other. Every occupation, trade, art, transaction, is a compend of the world, and a correlative of every other. Each one is an entire emblem of human life; of its good and ill, its trials, its enemies, its course and its end. And each one must somehow accommodate the whole man, and recite all his destiny.
The world globes itself in a drop of dew.
Source: A World Waiting to Be Born: Civility Rediscovered