54 Beautiful Hafez Quotes & Poems That’ll Grab Your Heart For Good

A collection of Hafez quotes, sayings, and poetry that reflect love, longing, truth, and life in all its rawness and richness. If you’re drawn to words that stir and steady you at once, these lines by Hafez are worth reading slow.

Persia gave poetry its soul, its scent, and its secrets. There’s something about Persian poetry; it sings, stings, sways, and sometimes flirts. The words feel like silk and fire all at once.

If you’ve read Rumi, you already know the kind of depth Persian poets are capable of. But then there’s Hafez.

Born in 14th-century Shiraz, Hafez lived during a time marked by religious rigidity and political tension.

But instead of staying quiet or choosing sides, he chose poetry.

And not the sweet, safe kind. His verses dance between the sacred and the sinful, questioning everything from fake piety to the limits of the self, all while sounding like a love song, gently, beautifully, and often with a metaphorical wine glass in hand.

His poetry talks of wine, love, faith, longing, hypocrisy, gardens, nightingales, and the wild in-between space we call life, but don’t take it all literally. That wine is probably the kind that burns your ego, not your throat. That beloved, maybe, is God, or maybe, your reflection. Maybe both.

Persian words themselves carry a kind of rhythm that English can only dream of. Even the translations feel like echoes of something ancient and alive. Hafez knew how to shape those words into verses that make you pause mid-scroll, mid-thought, mid-life.

So here it is, a small collection of Hafez’s poems, quotes, and lines that moved me in the middle of messy days.

I hope they reach you the way they reached me—uninvited, unexpected, and somehow just in time.

Make tea. Take your time. Some lines might sit with you longer than you expect.

P.S. If you’re someone who loves digging deeper (or likes calling out fake poetry wearing Hafez’s name), there has been some thoughtful debate around translations, especially those that sound nothing like Persian poetry. I’m sticking to sources rooted in the original spirit of his work.

Hafez Quotes

We have come into this exquisite world to experience ever and ever more deeply our divine courage, freedom, and light.

Stay close to anything that makes you glad you are alive.

A poet is someone who can pour light into a spoon. Then raise it to nourish your beautiful parched, holy mouth.

The words you speak become the house you live in.

Light will someday split you open, even if your life is now a cage. Little by little, you will turn into stars. Little by little, you will turn into the whole sweet, amorous Universe. Love will surely burst you wide open into an unfettered, booming new galaxy… O little by little, you will turn into God.

What do sad people have in common? It seems they have all built a shrine to the past and often go there and do a strange wail and worship. What is the beginning of happiness? It is to stop being so religious like that.

Ever since happiness heard your name, it has been running through the streets, trying to find you.

For I have learned that every heart will get what it prays for most.

How did the rose ever open its heart and give this world all of its beauty? It felt the encouragement of light against its being, otherwise we all remain too frightened.

This sky where we live is no place to lose your wings so love, love, love.

When all your desires are distilled, you will cast just two votes: to love more, and be happy.

We have not come here to take prisoners, but to surrender ever more deeply to freedom and joy.

There are different wells within your heart. Some fill with each good rain, others are far too deep for that.

I am not one of those who fear the unknown, since mystery is the essence of life.

Art is the conversation between lovers. Art offers an opening for the heart. True art makes the divine silence in the soul break into applause.

True art awakens the extraordinary ovation.

I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being.

Even after all this time, the sun never says to the Earth, ‘You owe me.’ Look what happens with a love like that, it lights the whole sky.

There is no pleasure without a tincture of bitterness.

Fear is the cheapest room in the house. I would like to see you living in better conditions.

Light will someday split you open; even if your life is now a cage.

Join me in the pure atmosphere of gratitude for life!

We are people who need to love, because love is the soul’s life, love is simply creation’s greatest joy.

The heart is the thousand-stringed instrument that can only be tuned with love.

Let’s get loose with compassion, let’s drown in the delicious ambience of love.

I once asked a bird, ‘How do you fly in this gravity of darkness ?’ And she replied, ‘Love lifts me.’

All your wounds from craving love exist because of heroic deeds.

Love sometimes wants to do us a great favor: hold us upside down and shake all the nonsense out.

Your love should never be offered to the mouth of a stranger… only to someone who has the valor and daring to cut pieces of their soul off with a knife… then weave them into a blanket to protect you.

Love sometimes gets tired of speaking sweetly, and it has to rip to shreds all your erroneous notions of the truth that make you fight within yourself, dear one, and with others, causing the world to weep on too many fine days. The Beloved sometimes wants to do us a great favor: Hold us upside down and shake all the nonsense out.

Now that your worry has proved such an unlucrative business, why not find a better job?

And even though the drunkenness of love has ruined me, my being is built upon those ruins for eternity.

What does life give me in the end but sorrow? What do love’s good and evil send but sorrow? I’ve only seen one true companion – pain, and I have known no faithful friend but sorrow.

I am happy even before I have a reason. I am full of light even before the sky can greet the sun or the moon. Dear companions, we have been in love with God for so very, very long.

I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being.

Out of a great need, we are all holding hands and climbing. Not loving is a letting go. Listen, the terrain around here is far too dangerous for that.

A day of silence can be a pilgrimage in itself.

Start seeing everything as God, but keep it a secret.

Every child has known God, not the God of names, not the God of don’ts, not the God who ever does anything weird, but the God who only knows four words – And keeps repeating them, saying, ‘Come dance with me.’ Come dance.

This place where you are right now, God circled on a map for you.

An awake heart is like a sky that pours light.

Zero is where the real fun starts. There’s too much counting everywhere else!

Why does the most exquisite rose have the sharpest thorns?

I am happy even before I have a reason.

I caught the happy virus last night. When I was out singing beneath the stars. It is remarkably contagious – So kiss me.

What drunkenness is this that brings me hope

The idea that a human being can achieve “perfect love” or “perfect knowing” may seem extraordinary, yet it is a belief shared by most spiritual systems.

If you knew the end of your story, nothing on any page—not one of your dramas, could bother you as much.

How did the rose ever open its heart and give this world all its beauty? It felt the encouragement of light against its being. Otherwise, we all remain too frightened.

For Hafiz reveals a God with a billion I.Q.—a God that would never cripple us with guilt or control us with fear.

Admit something: Everyone you see, you say to them, “Love me.” Of course, you do not do this out loud; otherwise, someone would call the cops. Still, though, think about this, this great pull in us to connect. Why not become the one who lives with a full moon in each eye that is always saying, with that sweet moon language, what every other eye in this world is dying to hear?

The great religions are the ships, Poets the lifeboats. Every sane person I know has jumped overboard.

Now is the time to know that all that you do is sacred… Now is the time to understand that all your ideas of right and wrong were just a child’s training wheels to be laid aside when you can finally live with veracity and love… Now is the time for the world to know that every thought and action is sacred. This is the time for you to deeply compute the impossibility that there is anything but Grace… Now is the season to know that everything you do is sacred.

You carry all the ingredients to turn your life into a nightmare, don’t mix them! You carry all the ingredients to turn your existence into joy, mix them, mix them!

That’s all for now. No deep takeaway, no bow-wrapped wisdom. Just some words that meant something to me and maybe meant something to you, too. If not, that’s fine. If yes, well… you know where to find them.