Rupi Kaur is a Canadian poet, artist, performer, and #1 New York Times bestselling author.
She has written four incredibly popular books:
- milk and honey
- the sun and her flowers
- home body
- Healing Through Words
She has received widespread recognition for her work promoting a balanced life and self-love journey.
Her first book, milk and honey, is the best-selling poetry of all time. She writes on themes of love, loss, confidence issues, trauma, and healing. She also addresses migration, societal pressures, violence, and domestic abuse throughout her poems. She promotes body positivity, feminism, inherent strength, and the importance of self-acceptance.
Her simple language and writing style has inspired so many people. Her writing is incredibly popular in self-development and personal growth circles online, especially on social media like Instagram and TikTok. This is part of the reason she is on so many bestseller lists.
The best part of poetry is that it can resonate so deeply with so many people. I’ve loved her poetry for a long time, but it particularly resonated with me after I got sick.
She writes about health, healing, trauma, and growth, and many of her poems are particularly relevant for those dealing with chronic illness. They speak to the highs and lows of life, self-discovery, and resilience.
Here are 150 of Rupi Kaur’s best poems:
Table of Contents
Rupi Kaur Self-Love Quotes:
Loneliness is a sign you are in desperate need of yourself.
How you love yourself is how you teach others to love you
We all feel like giving up sometimes. Give up on things and other people, if they don’t serve you, and if you must. But don’t give up on yourself. Miracles in you are waiting their turn to happen. Love yourself and keep believing.
You have everything to gain from believing in yourself yet you spend all your time with self-doubt.
You do not just wake up and become the butterfly—growth is a process
What is stronger than the human heart which shatters over and over and still lives.
If you’re waiting for them to make you feel like you’re enough you’ll be waiting a long time
We are always in progress, getting somewhere, aiming for something. And we always will be. We are perfectly imperfect right now. Deserving, because we exist.
Look what you’ve done. Look how far you’ve come. You are a warrior. You are built for this. If you could see yourself now, you’d never take your eyes off yourself.
You must want to spend the rest of your life with yourself first”
Make it a point to love yourself as fiercely as you do other people – commitment.
Befriend yourself, for self-love is the truest companionship.
Accept that you deserve more than painful love.
The right one does not stand in your way they make space for you to step forward.
Everything necessary to live a vivid life already exists in me.
We need more love not from men but from ourselves and each other.
Own your worth, for you are a masterpiece in progress.
Cherish the beauty of your soul, for it radiates self-love.
Really, at the end of the day, the only thing you can control is yourself; the only person you can truly educate is yourself. You have to redefine what beauty is to you so you can’t be affected by what people are saying.
You lose everything when you don’t love yourself – and gain everything when you do.
Fall in love with your solitude.
The power of knowing your worth is you can never run out of reasons to love yourself.
Most importantly, love like it’s the only thing you know how.
Thought-Provoking Rupi Kaur Quotes:
The thing worth holding onto would not have let go
Our backs tell stories no books have the spine to carry
Trying to convince myself I am allowed to take up space is like writing with my left hand when I was born to use my right
accept that you deserve more
than painful love
life is moving
the healthiest thing
for your heart is
to move with it.
A lot of times we are angry at other people for not doing what we should have done for ourselves.
people say things
meant to rip you in half
but you hold the power to not
turn their words into a knife
and cut yourself
I want to apologize to all the women I have called beautiful
before I’ve called them intelligent or brave
I am sorry I made it sound as though
something as simple as what you’re born with
is all you have to be proud of
when you have broken mountains with your wit
from now on I will say things like
you are resilient, or you are extraordinary
not because I don’t think you’re beautiful
but because I need you to know
you are more than that
Other women’s bodies are not our battlegrounds.
If you could accept that perfection is impossible, what would you stop obsessing over?
there is nothing
more painful than
grieving someone
who’s still living.
We all move forward when we recognize how resilient and striking the women around us are
Truth, honesty, empowerment – it’s what I want for myself and my readers.
I did not start out thinking I’m going to become a feminist poet. It was a tag I was given.
The thing about writing is I can’t tell if it’s healing or destroying.
sometimes
-you are too late
the apology
never comes
when it is wanted
and when it comes
it is neither wanted
nor needed.
Give to those who have nothing to give to you
For if we can’t learn to be kind to each other how will we ever learn to be kind to the most desperate parts of ourselves.
Inspirational Rupi Kaur Quotes:
The kindest words my father said to me: ‘Women like you drown oceans.’
I didn’t leave because I stopped loving you, I left because the longer I stayed the less I loved myself.
There is a difference between someone telling you they love you and them actually loving you
Sister how do I love myself enough to know your accomplishments are not my failures – we are not each other’s competition
If I’m not the love of your life I’ll be the greatest loss instead
I want to leave behind a literary legacy.
If you are not enough for yourself you will never be enough for someone else
You have only scratched the surface of what you’re capable of. There are decades of victories ahead of you.
Accept yourself as you were designed.
It is you who became yourself but those before you are a part of your fabric.
Rupi Kaur Quotes for Illness:
On days you can’t hear yourself slow down to let your mind and body catch up to each other – stillness
Life does not stop for anybody it drags you by the legs whether you want to move forward or not that is the gift.
Being productive is knowing when to rest. Being productive is knowing when to rest.
You have everything to gain from believing in yourself yet you spend all your time with self-doubt.
Wish pure love and soft peace upon the ones who’ve been unkind to you and keep moving forward.
We can work at our own pace and still be successful.
If you tried and didn’t end up where you wanted to go, that’s still progress.
You always have you. You are never alone.
Your body is a museum of natural disasters. Can you grasp how stunning that is.
I have what I have and I am happy.
I’ve lost what I’ve lost and I am still happy.
I know it feels like tomorrow will never come and today will be the most difficult day to get through. The hurt will pass as it always does.
I like the way the stretch marks on my thighs look human
Kindness to yourself is the purest form of self-love.
Be tender and tough all at once. you need to be vulnerable to live fully but rough enough to survive it all.
Don’t let us convince you that sacrificing yourself is how you must show love.
I have to honor my mind and body if I want to sustain this journey – life.
And here you are living despite it all.
If you were born with the weakness to fall you were born with the strength to rise.
Stay strong through your pain. Grow flowers from it.
It takes grace to remain kind in cruel situations.
To be soft is to be powerful.
I will no longer compare my path to others – I refuse to do a disservice to my life
After feeling disconnected for so long my mind and body are finally coming back to each other.”
The way you speak of yourself, the way you degrade yourself into smallness is abuse -self-harm.
You are lonely but you are not alone – there is a difference.
it was when I stopped searching for home within others and lifted the foundations of home within myself I found there were no roots more intimate than those between a mind and body that have decided to be whole.
I get so lost in where I want to go I forget that the place I’m in is already quite magical.
Productivity is not how much work I do in a day but how well I balance what I need to stay healthy.
Never feel guilty for starting again
Like the rainbow after the rain joy will reveal itself after sorrow.
I have survived far too much to go quietly.
Learning to not envy someone else’s blessings is what grace looks like.
it takes monsters to steal souls
and fighters to reclaim them
What is the greatest lesson a woman should learn that since day one she’s already had everything she needs within herself it’s the world that convinced her she did not.
I want to leave this place knowing I did something with my body other than trying to make it look perfect.
I am trusting the uncertainty and believing I will end up somewhere right and good.
Sadness looks the same across all cultures, races, and communities. So does happiness and joy.
Let it go, let it leave, let it happen. Nothing in this world was promised or belonged to you anyway.
I am not my worst days
I am not what happened to me.
Despite knowing they won’t be here for long they still choose to live their brightest lives – sunflowers
My heart is beating, and I’m breathing, and nothing anybody has ever done has changed that.
You didn’t lose it happiness has always been here – you just lost perspective.
living is difficult.
it is difficult for everybody
and it is at that moment when living feels like crawling through a pin-sized hole that we must resist the urge of succumbing to bad memories
refuse to bow before bad months or bad years.
The way you speak of yourself, the way you degrade yourself into smallness is abuse – self-harm.
To hate is an easy lazy thing but to love takes strength everyone has but not all are willing to practise.
Healing is everyday work.
Look down at your body whisper there is no home like you.
I will never have this version of me again let me slow down and be with her – always evolving.
Why is it that when the story ends we begin to feel all of it
I thank the universe for taking everything it has taken and giving to me everything it is giving – balance
It is part of the human experience to feel pain. Do not be afraid. Open yourself to it.
I am not my worst days. I am not what happened to me – reminder.
People go but how they left always stays
I learned vulnerability is always the right choice because it is easy to be cold in a world that makes it so very difficult to remain soft.
My heart knows the language of resilience
Scars tell stories of strength and survival.
The world gives you so much pain and here you are making gold out of it – there is nothing purer than that
I am made of water, of course, I am emotional
You have to stop searching for why. At some point you have to leave it alone.
you look at me and cry
everything hurts
i hold you and whisper
but everything can heal
You have sadness living in places sadness shouldn’t live
Do not look for healing at the feet of those who broke you
i am hopelessly
a lover and
a dreamer and
that will be the
death of me
How is it so easy for you to be kind to people he asked milk and honey dripped from my lips as i answered cause people have not been kind to me
Trust your body it reacts to right and wrong better than your mind does
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