The sentence is Coleman Barks’ own, not Rumi’s. It first appears in Open Secret: Versions of Rumi (Threshold Books, 1984), Barks’ free re-rendering of Rumi’s Quatrain 81 built from a literal crib by the Persian scholar John Moyne — and what Barks actually printed was “Let the beauty we love be what we do.” The familiar internet form, “the beauty of what you love … what you do,” is a later rewording of even that. The Persian quatrain underneath is about ritual prayer, and Rumi’s Rumi scholar Ibrahim Gamard states flatly that these are Barks’ words, not Rumi’s.
“Let the beauty of what you love be what you do” not Rumi. The line is Coleman Barks', from his 1984 "version" of Rumi's Quatrain 81 in Open Secret (Threshold Books); Barks printed "Let the beauty we love be what we do," and he read no Persian. Ibrahim Gamard and Ravan Farhadi render the Persian as "There are a hundred kinds of prayer, bowing, and prostration for the one whose prayer-niche is the beauty of the Beloved." Via Quotle.info
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In context
Evoking the world of Coleman Barks — American poet · the man who made Rumi a bestseller in English. Theme: "Let the beauty of what you love be what you do". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Minimalist
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Provenance
Where the line actually comes from
Popular wording
“Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.” — found in no Rumi text or translation
What was actually printed
“Let the beauty we love be what we do.”
Book
Open Secret: Versions of Rumi (Threshold Books, Putney, Vt., 1984), p. 7 — reprinted in The Essential Rumi (HarperSanFrancisco, 1995), p. 36
Translation
Not a translation. A free ‘version’ by Coleman Barks of Rumi’s Quatrain 81, worked up from a literal rendering by the Persian linguist John Moyne; Barks read no Persian.
Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
as printed, 1984
This is the couplet as Barks printed it — the close of a short quatrain that opens by describing waking up empty and reaching for a musical instrument rather than a book. Gamard and Farhadi give the Persian it is loosely based on as: “There are a hundred kinds of prayer, bowing, and prostration for the one whose prayer-niche is the beauty of the Beloved.” The original mentions neither kissing nor the ground.
Wikiquote lists “Let the beauty of what you love be what you do” in its Attributed section for Rumi ↗ — not among the sourced Masnavi or Divan-i Shams quotations — and the only citation it supplies is Linda J. Ferguson, Path for Greatness: Spiritualty at Work (2000) p. 51.
Barks — who died on 23 February 2026 at 88 — “neither spoke nor read Persian” ↗; he rewrote the poems from other scholars’ English translations, which is why his output is described as versions rather than translations.
Rumi’s 13th-century Persian is long in the public domain, but the English words here are not Rumi’s — they are Coleman Barks’ own, first published in Open Secret: Versions of Rumi (Threshold Books, 1984) and reprinted in The Essential Rumi (HarperSanFrancisco, 1995). Both are well after 1931, so this wording is in copyright in the United States; the further-reworded popular variant has no identified author and no known source, so no public-domain status can be claimed for it either.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
Two layers of drift, both away from Rumi
This line is misattributed twice over: once when a modern poet’s own sentence was published under Rumi’s name, and again when the internet rewrote that sentence and kept the byline.
✕
The wordingRumi (Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi, 1207–1273) Not his words
Rumi scholar Ibrahim Gamard, co-translator of the complete quatrains, writes that Barks’ often-quoted words “are his words and are not Rumi’s words at all” ↗. The Persian of Quatrain 81 speaks of a hundred kinds of prayer, bowing and prostration for one whose prayer-niche is the Beloved’s beauty; it does not mention kissing, the ground, or doing what you love.
✕
The popular second-person formAn anonymous rewrite of Coleman Barks Reworded again
Barks printed “Let the beauty we love be what we do.” The circulating version swaps in “the beauty of what you love … what you do.” Wikiquote lists this exact wording under Attributed ↗, and the only citation it offers is Linda J. Ferguson’s Path for Greatness: Spiritualty at Work (2000) p. 51 — a secondary self-help source, not a Rumi text.
✕
The meaningThe vocational reading (‘do work you love’) Sense inverted
✓The truth: the sentence was written in English by Coleman Barks ↗, a poet who read no Persian, for his 1984 book Open Secret: Versions of Rumi ↗ — and the version you have seen is not even Barks’ wording.
Context
How a prayer about prostration became a career-advice slogan
In 1976 the poet Robert Bly showed Coleman Barks a stack of scholarly Rumi translations, and Barks — a University of Georgia literature teacher who neither spoke nor read Persian ↗ — began turning them into loose American free verse. Working from literal cribs by the Persian linguist John Moyne, he published Open Secret: Versions of Rumi with Threshold Books in 1984 ↗. That book is where this sentence enters the English language, and Barks always called such pieces versions, not translations.
What the version replaced is the whole story. Rumi’s quatrain is a mystical reading of Islamic ritual prayer: Gamard and Farhadi give the Persian as “There are a hundred kinds of prayer, bowing, and prostration for the one whose prayer-niche is the beauty of the Beloved.” The mihrab — the niche a Muslim faces to pray — is the hinge of the line, and it is absent from Barks entirely ↗. Then the internet did its own edit, turning Barks’ communal “the beauty we love … what we do” into the second-person self-help form now printed on mugs and graduation cards.
“Barks’ often-quoted words … are his words and are not Rumi’s words at all.” — Ibrahim Gamard
Why the missing word matters
A mihrab is the niche in a mosque wall that marks the direction of prayer. In the Persian, the devotee’s prayer-niche is the Beloved’s beauty — the hundred bowings and prostrations are all aimed at God. Barks’ line keeps the cadence and drops the object of worship, which is how a verse about ritual devotion becomes a sentence about doing work you enjoy.
Barks’ renderings are the reason Rumi outsells most living poets in America, and that reach is exactly why the substitution is worth flagging: a reader quoting this line believes they are quoting a 13th-century Muslim scholar, when they are quoting a 20th-century Georgia poet paraphrasing a paraphrase.
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1937–2026 · American poet · the man who made Rumi a bestseller in English
Coleman Barks taught literature at the University of Georgia for three decades and, from 1976 — when the poet Robert Bly handed him a sheaf of academic translations — spent the rest of his life remaking Rumi in American free verse. He neither spoke nor read Persian, working instead from other people’s literal renderings, and he consistently called the results versions rather than translations. Those versions sold in the hundreds of thousands and made a 13th-century Persian jurist the best-selling poet in the United States — which is precisely why so many sentences of Barks’ own composition now circulate under Rumi’s name.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Primary source & scholarly correction
Jalal al-Din Rumi, Open Secret: Versions of Rumi, trans. John Moyne and Coleman Barks (Putney, VT: Threshold Books, 1984), 7; reprinted in The Essential Rumi (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995), 36. The printed line reads “Let the beauty we love be what we do.” Ibrahim Gamard and Ravan Farhadi render the Persian of Rumi’s Quatrain 81 as “There are a hundred kinds of prayer, bowing, and prostration for the one whose prayer-niche is the beauty of the Beloved.”
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Let the beauty of what you love be what you do’?” Last verified 4 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/let-the-beauty-of-what-you-love-be-what-you-do/