— A popular English rendering of Rumi, not a literal translation of the Persian
About this quote
हिन्दी में
जो कुछ भी सुंदर, सुहावना और प्यारा बनाया गया है, वह उस आँख के लिए बनाया गया है जो देख सके।
What it means
Notice who the sentence is actually about. It is built in the passive — is made … is made for — so it is not describing the rose or the evening; it is describing an intention behind them, and naming the party that intention was aimed at. Beauty, on this reading, is addressed to someone, the way a letter is addressed.
The flattering reading is that only rare, sensitive people can perceive beauty. The line says nearly the opposite: the seeing eye is the ordinary intended recipient, and a failure to see is a delivery that did not arrive. The object loses nothing by being missed — the arrangement simply goes unanswered.
What it teaches you
When something leaves you cold, the useful question is not whether it deserved your attention but what kind of looking it was built for — how long, from what distance, with what else switched off. Give one thing you pass every day the full minute; if it changes, the variable was never the object.
अर्थ और सीख
यह पंक्ति वस्तु के बारे में नहीं, उसके पीछे के इरादे के बारे में है — सुंदरता किसी के लिए बनाई गई है, जैसे चिट्ठी किसी के नाम लिखी जाती है। इसका अर्थ यह नहीं कि सिर्फ़ खास लोग सुंदरता देख पाते हैं; देखने वाली आँख ही वह पता है जिस पर यह चिट्ठी भेजी गई है, और न देखने पर बात अनुत्तरित रह जाती है। सबक: जो चीज़ फीकी लगे, पहले अपनी नज़र का ढंग और ठहराव जाँचिए, फिर चीज़ को।
Where it comes from
Beauty here is not a property of the object but a transaction requiring a competent witness. Nothing is wasted on the seeing eye; everything is wasted on the blind one. Ghalib made the same point in Urdu four centuries later — the narcissus weeping for want of sight until a true seer is born in the garden.
A popular English rendering of Rumi. Rumi (1207–1273) wrote in Persian; almost every English line shared online is a modern rendering rather than a literal translation. Sourced passages from the Masnavi, with their selection titles, are collected under Rumi on Love.
