Kahlil Gibran Quotes

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Kahlil Gibran or Gibran Khalil Gibran (1883 – 1931) was a Lebanese American artist, writer, philosopher and the third most popular poet in history after Shakespeare and Laozi. Born in an underprivileged and deprived family, Khalil rose to the level of world renowned author and artist despite the adverse circumstances he often landed into. As an artist, he has also created some of the most fascinating drawing during his lifetime. His bestselling book The Prophet, a collection of 26 splendid poems, has been translated into over 20 foreign languages.

See also: Kahlil Gibran and Song of Love by Kahlil Gibran

A fox looked at his shadow at sunrise and said, “I will have a camel for lunch today.” And all morning he went about looking for camels. But at noon he saw his shadow again-and he said, “A mouse will do. – Kahlil Gibran

A friend who is far away is sometimes much nearer than one who is at hand. Is not the mountain far more awe-inspiring and more clearly visible to one passing through the valley than to those who inhabit the mountain? – Kahlil Gibran

A God who is good knows no segregation amongst words or names. And were a God to deny his blessing to those who pursue a different path to eternity, there would be no human who should offer worship. – Kahlil Gibran

A hermit is one who renounces the world of fragments that he may enjoy the world wholly and without interruption. – Kahlil Gibran

A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle. – Kahlil Gibran

A little while, a moment of rest upon the wind, and another woman shall bear me. – Kahlil Gibran

A look which reveals inward stress adds more beauty to the face, no matter how much tragedy and pain it bespeaks; but the face which, in silence, does not announce hidden mysteries is not beautiful, regardless of the symmetry of its features. – Kahlil Gibran

A madman is not less a musician than you or myself; only the instrument on which he plays is a little out of tune. – Kahlil Gibran

A man can be free without being great, but no man can be great without being free. – Kahlil Gibran

A man’s true wealth is the good he does in the world. – Kahlil Gibran

A man’s true wealth is the good he does in the world. Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror. But you are eternity and you are the mirror. – Kahlil Gibran

A minute moving among the patterns of beauty and the dreams of love is greater and more precious than an age filled with splendor granted by the weak to the strong. – Kahlil Gibran

A poet is a bird of unearthly excellence, who escapes from his celestial realm arrives in this world warbling. If we do not cherish him, he spreads his wings and flies back into his homeland. – Kahlil Gibran

A root is a flower that disdains fame. – Kahlil Gibran

A sense of humour is a sense of proportion. – Kahlil Gibran

A shy failure is nobler than an immodest success. – Kahlil Gibran

A teacher can only lead you to the threshold of your own mind. – Kahlil Gibran

A thief is a man in need. A liar is a man in fear. – Kahlil Gibran

A traveller I am, and a navigator, and everyday I discover a new region within my soul. – Kahlil Gibran

A truly religious man does not embrace a religion; and he who embraces one has no religion. – Kahlil Gibran

A truth is to be known always, to be uttered sometimes. – Kahlil Gibran

A voice cannot carry the tongue and the lips that gave it wings. Alone must it seek the ether. And alone and without his nest shall the eagle fly across the sun. – Kahlil Gibran

A woman whom Providence has provided with beauty of spirit and body is a truth, at the same time both open and secret, which we can understand only by love, and touch only by virtue. – Kahlil Gibran

A word I want to see written on my grave: I am alive like you, and I am standing beside you. Close your eyes and look around, you will see me in front of you. – Kahlil Gibran

Advance, and never halt, for advancing is perfection. Advance and do not fear the thorns in the path, for they draw only corrupt blood. – Kahlil Gibran

All can hear, but only the sensitive can understand… – Kahlil Gibran

All life in rhythmic fragments moves within me. – Kahlil Gibran

All men love you for themselves. I love you for yourself. – Kahlil Gibran

All our words are but crumbs that fall down from the feast of the mind. – Kahlil Gibran

All that spirits desire, spirits attain. – Kahlil Gibran

All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life’s heart. – Kahlil Gibran

All things in this creation exist within you and all things in you exist in creation; there is no border between you and the closest things, and there is no distance between you and the farthest things, and all things, from the lowest to the loftiest, from the smallest to the greatest, are within you as equal things. – Kahlil Gibran

All things in this vast universe exist in you, with you, and for you. – Kahlil Gibran

All work is empty save when there is love. – Kahlil Gibran

All you have shall someday be given. Therefore give now, that the season of giving may be yours and not your inheritors. – Kahlil Gibran

Always you have been told that work is a curse and labour a misfortune. But I say to you that when you work you fulfill a part of earth’s furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream was born, and in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life… – Kahlil Gibran

Am I a harp that the hand of the mighty may touch me, or a flute that his breath may pass through me? A seeker of silences am I, and what treasure have I found in silences that I may dispense with confidence? – Kahlil Gibran

Am I less man because I believe in a greater man? – Kahlil Gibran

Among the hills, when you sit in the cool shade of the white poplars, sharing the peace and serenity of distant fields and meadows – then let your heart say in silence, “God rests in reason.” And when the storm comes, and the mighty wind shakes the forest, and thunder and lightning proclaim the majesty of the sky, – then let your heart say in awe, “God moves in passion. – Kahlil Gibran

An exaggeration is a truth that has lost its temper – Kahlil Gibran

An eye for an eye, and the whole world would be blind. – Kahlil Gibran

And all knowledge is vain save when there is work, and all work is empty save when there is love; and when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another, and to God. – Kahlil Gibran

And alone and without his nest shall the Eagle fly across the sun. – Kahlil Gibran

And as a single leaf turns not yellow but with the silent knowledge of the whole tree. – Kahlil Gibran

And before my Soul took me to task I was hard of hearing; I heard only tumult and uproar. But now I am all ears listening to the silence and its choirs singing the hymns of time, intoning the praises of the firmament, revealing the secrets of the invisible. – Kahlil Gibran

And ever has it been known that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation. – Kahlil Gibran

And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair. – Kahlil Gibran

And God said, Love your enemy, & I obeyed Him & loved myself. – Kahlil Gibran

And how shall you punish those whose remorse is already greater than their misdeeds? – Kahlil Gibran

And I have found both freedom and safety in my madness. Freedom of loneliness and safety from being understood. For those who understand us enslave something in us. – Kahlil Gibran

And if there come the singers, and the dancers and the flute players – buy of their gifts also. For they too are gatherers of fruit and frankincense, and that which they bring, though fashioned of dreams, is raiment and fod for your soul. – Kahlil Gibran

And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle man’s ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night. – Kahlil Gibran

And if you would know God, be not therefore a solver of riddles. Rather look about you and you shall see Him playing with your children. And look into space; you shall see Him walking in the cloud, outstretching His arms in the lightning and descending in rain. You shall see Him smiling in flowers, then rising and waving His hands in trees. – Kahlil Gibran

And is not the lute that soothes your spirit the very wood that was hollowed with knives? – Kahlil Gibran

And is not time even as love is, undivided and paceless? – Kahlil Gibran

And is not time even as love is, undivided and paceless? But if in you thought you must measure time into seasons, let each season encircle all the other seasons, And let today embrace the past with remembrance and the future with longing. – Kahlil Gibran

And let it direct your passion with reason, that your passion may live through its own daily resurrection, and like the phoenix rise above its own ashes. – Kahlil Gibran

And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. – Kahlil Gibran

And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit. For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable is caught. – Kahlil Gibran

And let to-day embrace the past with remembrance and the future with longing. – Kahlil Gibran

And let your best be for your friend. If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also. For what is your friend that your should seek with him hours to kill? Seek with him always hours to live. For it is his to fill your need, but not your emptiness. And in the sweetness of friendship, let there be laughter, and the sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed. – Kahlil Gibran

And now you ask in your heart, ‘How shall we distinguish that which is good in pleasure from that which is not good?’ Go to your fields and your gardens, and you shall learn that it is the pleasure of the bee to gather honey of the flower, But it is also the pleasure of the flower to yield its honey to the bee. For to the bee a flower is a fountain of life, And to the flower a bee is a messenger of love, And to both, bee and flower, the giving and the receiving of pleasure is a need and an ecstasy. * People of Orphalese, be in your pleasures like the flowers and the bees. – Kahlil Gibran

And one of the elders of the city , said , speak to us of good and evil. And he answered : You are good in countless ways , and you are not evil when you are not good. – Kahlil Gibran

And only the sure of foot can give a hand to him who stumbles. – Kahlil Gibran

And some of your elders remember pleasures with regret like wrongs committed in drunkenness. But regret is the beclouding of the mind and not its chastisement. They should remember their pleasures with gratitude, as they would the harvest of a summer. – Kahlil Gibran

And that which sings and contemplates in you is still dwelling within the bounds of that first moment which scattered the stars into space. – Kahlil Gibran

And the self-same well from which your laughter rises was often-times filled with your tears. – Kahlil Gibran

And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips. – Kahlil Gibran

And what word is knowledge but a shadow of wordless knowledge? – Kahlil Gibran

And when one of you falls down he falls for those behind him, a caution against the stumbling stone. Ay, and he falls for those ahead of him, who though faster and surer of foot, yet removed not the stumbling stone. – Kahlil Gibran

And when you crush an apple with your teeth, say to it in your heart: Your seeds shall live in my body, And the buds of your tomorrow shall blossom in my heart, And your fragrance shall be my breath, And together we shall rejoice through all the seasons. – Kahlil Gibran

And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb. – Kahlil Gibran

And when you were a silent word upon Life’s quivering lips, I too was there, another silent word. Then life uttered us and we came down the years throbbing with memories of yesterday and with longing for tomorrow, for yesterday was death conquered and tomorrow was birth pursued. – Kahlil Gibran

And you receivers – and you are all receivers – assume no weight of gratitude, lest you lay a yoke upon yourself and upon him who gives. Rather rise together with the giver on his gifts as on wings; For to be overmindful of your debt, is to doubt his generosity who has the free hearted earth for mother, and God for father. – Kahlil Gibran

And you would accept the seasons of your heart just as you have always accepted that seasons pass over your fields and you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief. – Kahlil Gibran

And your fragrance shall be my breath, And together we shall rejoice through all the seasons. – Kahlil Gibran

Are you a politician asking what your country can do for you or a zealous one asking what you can do for your country? – Kahlil Gibran

Are you a politician asking what your country can do for you or a zealous one asking what you can do for your country? If you are the first, then you are a parasite; if the second, then you are an oasis in the desert. – Kahlil Gibran

Art arises when the secret vision of the artist and the manifestation of nature agree to find new shapes. – Kahlil Gibran

Art is a step from what is obvious and well-known toward what is arcane and concealed. – Kahlil Gibran

Art is a step in the known toward the unknown – Kahlil Gibran

As one’s gifts increase, his friends decrease. – Kahlil Gibran

As the strings of a lute are apart though they quiver the same music. – Kahlil Gibran

At ebb tide I wrote a line upon the sand, and gave it all my heart and all my soul. At flood tide I returned to read what I had inscribed and found my ignorance upon the shore. – Kahlil Gibran

Be like a flower and turn your face to the sun. – Kahlil Gibran

Be like the flower, turn your faces to the sun. – Kahlil Gibran

Be patient, for it is from doubt that knowledge is born. – Kahlil Gibran

Beauty in not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart. – Kahlil Gibran

Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror. – Kahlil Gibran

Beauty is life when life unveils her holy face. – Kahlil Gibran

Beauty is not a need but an ecstasy. It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth, But rather a heart enflamed and a soul enchanted. – Kahlil Gibran

Beauty is that which attracts your soul, and that which loves to give and not to receive. – Kahlil Gibran

Beauty shall rise with the dawn from the east. – Kahlil Gibran

Because the soul is like a flower that folds its petals when dark comes, and breathes not its fragrance into the phantoms of the night. – Kahlil Gibran

Behind the veil of each night, there is a smiling dawn. – Kahlil Gibran

Behold, I have reached the peak of the mountain and my spirit has taken flight in the heavens of freedom and liberation. I have gone far, far away, O children of my mother; the hills beyond the mists are now hidden from my view, the last traces of the valleys have been flooded by the ocean of serenity, and the paths and trails have been erased by the hand of oblivion. The roar of ocean waves has faded. I no longer hear anything but the anthem of eternity, which harmonizes with the spirit. – Kahlil Gibran

Believing is a fine thing, but placing those beliefs into execution is a test of strength. Many are those who talk like the roar of the sea, gut their lives are shallow and stagnant, like the rotting marshes. Many are those who lift their heads above the mountain tops, but their spirits remain dormant in the obscurity of the caverns. – Kahlil Gibran

Between the shores of the oceans and the summit of the highest mountain is a secret route that you must absolutely take before being one with the sons of the Earth. – Kahlil Gibran

Between what is said and not meant, and what is meant and not said, most of love is lost. – Kahlil Gibran

Birth and Death are the two noblest expressions of bravery. – Kahlil Gibran

Braving obstacles and hardships is braver than retreat to tranquility. – Kahlil Gibran

Braving obstacles and hardships is nobler than retreat to tranquility. The butterfly that hovers around the lamp until it dies is more admirable than the mole that lives in a dark tunnel. – Kahlil Gibran

But if in your fear you would seek only love’s peace and love’s pleasure, then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love’s threshing-floor, into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears. – Kahlil Gibran

But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires: To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To know the pain of too much tenderness. To be wounded by your own understanding of love; And to bleed willingly and joyfully. To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving; To rest at noon hour and meditate love’s ecstasy; To return home at eventide with gratitude; And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise on your lips. – Kahlil Gibran

But let there be spaces in your togetherness and let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. – Kahlil Gibran

But memory is an autumn leaf that murmurs a while in the wind and then is heard no more. – Kahlil Gibran

But now I have learned to listen to silence. To hear its choirs singing the song of ages, chanting the hymns of space, and disclosing the secrets of eternity. – Kahlil Gibran

But you who walk facing the sun, what images drawn on the earth can hold you? – Kahlil Gibran

But you who walk facing the sun, what images drawn on the earth can hold you? You who travel with the wind, what weathervane shall direct your course? What man’s law shall bind you if you break your yoke but upon no man’s prison door? What laws shall you fear if you dance but stumble against no man’s iron chains? And who is he that shall bring you to judgment if you tear off your garment yet leave it in no man’s path? People of Orphalese, you can muffle the drum, and you can loosen the strings of the lyre, but who shall command the skylark not to sing? – Kahlil Gibran

Cast aside those who liken godliness to whimsy and who try to combine their greed for wealth with their desire for a happy afterlife. – Kahlil Gibran

Come with us to the field, or go with our brothers to the sea and cast your net. For the land and the sea shall be bountiful to you even as to us. – Kahlil Gibran

Coming generations will learn equality from poverty, and love from woes. – Kahlil Gibran

Conscience is a just but weak judge. Weakness leaves it powerless to execute its judgment. – Kahlil Gibran

Could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy. – Kahlil Gibran

Cover me with soft earth, and let each handful be mixed With seeds of jasmine, lilies, and myrtle; and when they Grow above me and thrive on my body’s element they will Breathe the fragrance of my heart into space. – Kahlil Gibran

Darkness is dawn not yet born. – Kahlil Gibran

Death changes nothing but the mask that covers our faces. – Kahlil Gibran

Death most resembles a prophet who is without honor in his own land or a poet who is a stranger among his people. – Kahlil Gibran

Defeat, my defeat, my deathless courage, You and I shall laugh together with the storm, And together we shall dig graves for all that die in us, and we shall stand in the sun with a will, And we shall be dangerous – Kahlil Gibran

Desire is half of life, indifference is half of death. – Kahlil Gibran

Disagreement may be the shortest cut between two minds. – Kahlil Gibran

Do not be merciful, but be just, for mercy is bestowed upon the guilty criminal, while Justice is all that the innocent man requires. – Kahlil Gibran

Do not fear the thorns in your path, for they draw only corrupt blood. – Kahlil Gibran

Do not keep crying when your love has been gone. You only need Smile because he had been given you the opportunity to meet someone who is better. – Kahlil Gibran

Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother. – Kahlil Gibran

Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother. Doubt is a foundling unhappy and astray, and though his own mother who gave him birth should find him and enfold him, he would withdraw in caution and in fear. – Kahlil Gibran

Each day look into your conscience and amend your faults; if you fail in this duty you will be untrue to the Knowledge and Reason that are within you. Keep a watchful eye over yourself as if you were your own enemy; for you cannot learn to govern yourself, unless you first learn to govern your own passions and obey the dictates of your conscience. – Kahlil Gibran

Each thing that exists remains forever, and that very existence of existence is proof of its eternity. But without that realization, which is the knowledge of perfect being, man would never know whether there was existence or non-existence. If eternal existence is altered, then it must become more beautiful; and if it disappears, it must return with more sublime image; and if it sleeps, it must dream of a better awakening, for it is ever greater upon its rebirth. – Kahlil Gibran

Education sows not seeds in you, but makes your seeds grow. – Kahlil Gibran

Enthusiasm is a volcano on whose top never grows the grass of hesitation. – Kahlil Gibran

Even as the holy and the righteous cannot rise beyond the highest which is in each one of you, so the wicked and the weak cannot fall lower than the lowest which is in you also. – Kahlil Gibran

Even while the Earth sleeps we travel. – Kahlil Gibran

Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation. – Kahlil Gibran

Every beauty and greatness in this world is created by a single thought or emotion inside a man. Every thing we see today, made by past generations, was, before its appearance, a thought in the mind of a man or an impulse in the heart of a woman. – Kahlil Gibran

Every man is two men; one is awake in the darkness, the other asleep in the light. – Kahlil Gibran

Every man loves two women; the one is the creation of his imagination and the other is not yet born – Kahlil Gibran

Everyone has experienced that truth: that love, like a running brook, is disregarded, taken for granted; but when the brook freezes over, then people begin to remember how it was when it ran, and they want it to run again. – Kahlil Gibran

Exaggeration is truth that has lost its temper. – Kahlil Gibran

Extreme torture is mute, and so we sat silent, petrified, like columns of marble buried under the sand of an earthquake. Neither wished to listen to the other because our heart-threads had become weak and even breathing would have broken them. – Kahlil Gibran

Faith is a knowledge within the heart, beyond the reach of proof. – Kahlil Gibran

Faith is an oasis in the heart which will never be reached by the caravan of thinking. – Kahlil Gibran

Fear of the devil is one way of doubting God. – Kahlil Gibran

Follow only beauty and obey only love. – Kahlil Gibran

Follow your heart. Your heart is the right guide in everything big. Mine is so limited. What you want to do is determined by that divine element that is in each of us. – Kahlil Gibran

For a love to grow through the test of everyday living, one must respect that zone of privacy where one retires to relate to the inside instead of the outside. – Kahlil Gibran

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning. Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun, so shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth. – Kahlil Gibran

For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man’s hunger. – Kahlil Gibran

For in truth it is life that gives unto life-while you, who deem yourself a giver, are but a witness. – Kahlil Gibran

For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one. – Kahlil Gibran

For life goes not backward, nor tarries with yesterday. – Kahlil Gibran

For love is sufficient unto love. – Kahlil Gibran

For Reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and Passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction. – Kahlil Gibran

For that which is boundless in you abides in the mansion of the sky, whose door is the morning mist, and whose windows are the songs and the silences of night. – Kahlil Gibran

For the breath of life is in the sunlight and the hand of life is in the wind. – Kahlil Gibran

For the criminal who is weak and poor the narrow cell of death awaits; but honor and glory await the rich who conceal their crimes behind their gold and silver and inherited glory. – Kahlil Gibran

For the first time the sun kissed my own naked face and my soul was inflamed with love for the sun, and I wanted my masks no more. And as if in a trance I cried, “Blessed, blessed are the thieves who stole my masks.” Thus I became a madman. – Kahlil Gibran

For the sight of the angry weather saddens my soul and the sight of the town, sitting like a bereaved mother beneath layers of ice, oppresses my heart. – Kahlil Gibran

For the vision of one man lends not its wings to another man. – Kahlil Gibran

For this I bless you most. You give much and know not that you give at all. – Kahlil Gibran

For thought is a bird of space, that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly. – Kahlil Gibran

For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons, and to step out of life’s procession that marches in majesty and proud submission towards the infinite. – Kahlil Gibran

For truth and the spirit will abide with the morrow. – Kahlil Gibran

For what is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst? – Kahlil Gibran

For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun? And what is it to cease breathing but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered? – Kahlil Gibran

For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun? And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance. – Kahlil Gibran

For what is it to die, But to stand in the sun and melt into the wind? – Kahlil Gibran

For what is prayer but the expansion of your self into the living ether? – Kahlil Gibran

Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair. – Kahlil Gibran

Forgetfulness is a form of freedom. – Kahlil Gibran

Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity. – Kahlil Gibran

Friendship with the ignorant is as foolish as arguing with a drunkard. – Kahlil Gibran

From a sensitive woman’s heart springs the happiness of mankind, and from the kindness of her noble spirit comes mankind’s affection. – Kahlil Gibran

Generosity is giving more than you can, and pride is taking less than you need. – Kahlil Gibran

Generosity is not giving me that which I need more than you do, but it is giving me that which you need more than I do. – Kahlil Gibran

Give and Take… For to the bee a flower is a fountain if life And to the flower a bee is a messenger of love And to both, bee and flower, the giving and the receiving is a need and an ecstasy. – Kahlil Gibran

Give me an ear and I will give you a Voice… – Kahlil Gibran

Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping, For only the hand of God can contain your hearts. – Kahlil Gibran

Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow. – Kahlil Gibran

God created music as a common language for all men. It inspires the poets, the composers and the architects. It lures us to search our souls for the meaning of the mysteries described in ancient books. – Kahlil Gibran

God has bestowed upon you intelligence and knowledge. Do not extinguish the lamp of Divine Grace and do not let the candle of wisdom die out in the darkness of lust and error. For a wise man approaches with his torch to light up the path of mankind. – Kahlil Gibran

God has created several doors which open onto truth. He opens them to all those who knock on them with the hand of faith. – Kahlil Gibran

God has given you a spirit with wings on which to soar into the spacious firmament of Love and Freedom. Is it not pitiful than that you cut your wings with your own hands and suffer your soul to crawl like an insect upon the earth? – Kahlil Gibran

God has made many doors opening into truth which He opens to all who knock upon them with hands of faith. – Kahlil Gibran

God has placed in each soul an apostle to lead us upon the illumined path. Yet many seek life from without, unaware that is within them. – Kahlil Gibran

God listens not to your words save when He Himself utters them through your lips. – Kahlil Gibran

God made the world with a heart full of love, Then He looked down from Heaven above, And saw that we all need a helping hand, Someone to share with, who’ll understand. He made special people to see us through The glad times and the sad times, too; A person on whom we can always depend, Someone we can call a friend. God made friends so we’ll carry a part Of His perfect love in all our hearts. – Kahlil Gibran

God made Truth with many doors to welcome every believer who knocks on them. – Kahlil Gibran

Half of what I say is meaningless; but I say it so that the other half may reach you. – Kahlil Gibran

Hallow the body as a temple to comeliness and sanctify the heart as a sacrifice to love; love recompenses the adorers. – Kahlil Gibran

Happiness is a myth we seek, If manifested surely irks; Like river speeding to the plain, On its arrival slows and murks. For man is happy only in His aspiration to the heights; When he attains his goal, he cools And longs for other distant flights. – Kahlil Gibran

Happiness is a vine that takes root and grows within the heart, never outside it. – Kahlil Gibran

Harlots shall be made pure by their own tears. But you publicans shall be held down by the chains of your own judgement. – Kahlil Gibran

Hate is a dead thing. Who of you would be a tomb? – Kahlil Gibran

Have you not heard of the man who was digging in the earth for roots and found a treasure? – Kahlil Gibran

He alone is great who turns the voice of the wind into a song made sweeter by his own loving. – Kahlil Gibran

He is short-sighted who looks only on the path he treads and the wall on which he leans. – Kahlil Gibran

He that tries to seize an opportunity after it has passed him by is like one who sees it approach but will not go to meet it. – Kahlil Gibran

He was gentle, like a man mindful of his own strength. In my dreams I beheld the kings of the earth standing in awe in His presence. – Kahlil Gibran

He who defines his conduct by ethics imprisons his song-bird in a cage. – Kahlil Gibran

He who denies his heritage, has no heritage. – Kahlil Gibran

He who does not prefer exile to slavery is not free by any measure of freedom, truth and duty. – Kahlil Gibran

He who does not see the angels and devils in the beauty and malice of life will be far removed from knowledge, and his spirit will be empty of affection. – Kahlil Gibran

He who does not see the kingdom of heaven in this life will never see it in the coming life. – Kahlil Gibran

He who does not seek advice is a fool. His folly blinds him to Truth and makes him evil, stubborn, and a danger to his fellow man. – Kahlil Gibran

He who has not looked on Sorrow will never see Joy. [for without sorrow how would you know what joy is? Contrast provides peceptive clarity] – Kahlil Gibran

He who is more mindful of one, loses the love and the faith of both. – Kahlil Gibran

He who listens to truth is not less than he who utters truth. – Kahlil Gibran

He who loses his mother loses a pure soul who blesses and guards him constantly. – Kahlil Gibran

He who passes not his days in the realm of dreams is the slave of the days. – Kahlil Gibran

He who repeats what he does not understand is no better than an ass that is loaded with books. – Kahlil Gibran

He who requires urging to do a noble act will never accomplish it. – Kahlil Gibran

He who seeks ecstasy in love should not complain of suffering. – Kahlil Gibran

He who understands you is greater kin to you than your own brother. For even your own kindred neither understand you nor know your true worth. – Kahlil Gibran

He who wears his morality but as his best garment were better naked. The wind and the sun will tear no holes in his skin. – Kahlil Gibran

Hearts united in pain and sorrow will not be separated by joy and happiness. Bonds that are woven in sadness are stronger than the ties of joy and pleasure. Love that is washed by tears will remain eternally pure and faithful. – Kahlil Gibran

Hell is not in torture; Hell is in an empty heart.. – Kahlil Gibran

Here I sit between my brother the mountain and my sister the sea. We three are one in loneliness, and the love that binds us together is deep and strong and strange. – Kahlil Gibran

History does not repeat itself except in the minds of those who do not know history. – Kahlil Gibran

How beautiful to find a heart that loves you, without asking you for anything, but to be okay. – Kahlil Gibran

How can I lose faith in the justice of life, when the dreams of those who sleep upon feathers are not more beautiful than the dreams of those who sleep upon the earth? – Kahlil Gibran

How distant I am from people when I am with them, and how close when they are far away. – Kahlil Gibran

How narrow is the vision that exalts the busyness of the ant above the singing of the grasshopper. – Kahlil Gibran

How often have you sailed in my dreams. And now you come in my awakening, which is my deeper dream. – Kahlil Gibran

Humanity is a river of light running from the ex-eternity to eternity. – Kahlil Gibran

Humanity looks upon Jesus the Nazarene as a poor-born Who suffered misery and humiliation with all of the weak. And He is pitied, for Humanity believes He was crucified painfully. . . . And all that Humanity offers to Him is crying and wailing and lamentation. For centuries Humanity has been worshiping weakness in the person of the Savior. The Nazarene was not weak! He was strong and is strong! But the people refuse to heed the true meaning of strength. – Kahlil Gibran

I am a poet who composes what life proses, and who proses what life composes. – Kahlil Gibran

I am bored with gabbers and their gab; my soul abhors them. . . . Is there any place where there is no traffic in empty talk? Is there on this earth one who does not worship himself talking? – Kahlil Gibran

I am forever walking upon these shores, Betwixt the sand and the foam, The high tide will erase my foot prints, And the wind will blow away the foam, But the sea and the shore will remain forever – Kahlil Gibran

I AM IGNORANT of absolute truth. But I am humble before my ignorance and therein lies my honor and my reward. – Kahlil Gibran

I am one of those who believe that spiritual progress is a rule of human life, but the approach to perfection is slow and painful. If a woman elevates herself in one respect and is retarded in another, it is because the rough trail that leads to the mountain peak is not free of ambushes of thieves and lairs of wolves. – Kahlil Gibran

I am the infinite sea, and all worlds are but grains of sand upon my shore.- Kahlil Gibran

I am the lover’s gift; I am the wedding wreath; I am the memory of a moment of happiness; I am the last gift of the living to the dead; I am a part of joy and a part of sorrow. – Kahlil Gibran

I came here to be for all and with all, and what I do today in my solitude will be echoed tomorrow by the multitude. What I say now with one heart will be said tomorrow by thousands of hearts… – Kahlil Gibran

I deserted the world and sought solitude because I became tired of rendering courtesy to those multitudes who believe that humility is a sort of weakness, and mercy a kind of cowardice, and snobbery a form of strength. – Kahlil Gibran

I discovered the secret of the sea in meditation upon a dewdrop. – Kahlil Gibran

I do not want you to hear that I LOVE you, but I want you to feel it without me having to say. – Kahlil Gibran

I existed from all eternity and, behold, I am here; and I shall exist till the end of time, for my being has no end. – Kahlil Gibran

I had a second birth when my soul and my body loved one another and were married. – Kahlil Gibran

I have found both freedom and safety in my madness; the freedom of loneliness and the safety from being understood, for those who understand us enslave something in us. – Kahlil Gibran

I have learned silence from the talkative, tolerance from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strangely, I am ungrateful to these teachers – Kahlil Gibran

I have learnt silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers. – Kahlil Gibran

I have never agreed with my other self wholly. The truth of the matter seems to lie between us. – Kahlil Gibran

I have passed the mountain peak and my soul is soaring in the firmament of Complete and unbounded freedom; I am in comfort, I am in peace. – Kahlil Gibran

I have pondered long, and I know now that only the pure of heart forgive the thirst that leads to dead waters. And only the sure of foot can give a hand to him who stumbles. – Kahlil Gibran

I love you when you bow in your mosque, kneel in your temple, pray in your church. For you and I are sons of one religion, and it is the spirit. – Kahlil Gibran

I love you, my brother, whoever you are – whether you worship in a church, kneel in your temple, or pray in your mosque. You and I are children of one faith, for the diverse paths of religion are fingers of the loving hand of the one supreme being, a hand extended to all, offering completeness of spirit to all, eager to receive all. – Kahlil Gibran

I once heard a learned man say, “Every evil has its remedy, except folly. To reprimand an obstinate fool or to preach to a dolt is like writing upon the water. Christ healed the blind, the halt, the palsied, and the leprous. But the fool He could not cure.” – Kahlil Gibran

I prefer to be a dreamer among the humblest, with visions to be realized, than lord among those without dreams and desires. – Kahlil Gibran

I purified my lips with sacred fire that I might speak of love, but when I opened my mouth to speak, I found myself mute. – Kahlil Gibran

I said to Life, I would hear Death speak. And Life raised her voice a little higher and said, You hear him now. – Kahlil Gibran

I sit between my brother the mountain and my sister the sea. We three are one in loneliness, and the love that binds us together is deep and strong and strange. – Kahlil Gibran

I slept and I dreamed that life is all joy. I woke and I saw that life is all service. I served and I saw that service is joy. – Kahlil Gibran

I use hate as a weapon to defend myself; had I been strong, I would never have needed that kind of weapon. – Kahlil Gibran

I want every image to be the beginning of an unseen image. – Kahlil Gibran

I wash my hands of those who imagine chattering to be knowledge, silence to be ignorance, and affection to be art. – Kahlil Gibran

I would not exchange the laughter of my heart for the fortunes of the multitudes. – Kahlil Gibran

I would not exchange the sorrows of my heart for the joys of the multitude. And I would not have the tears that sadness makes to flow from my every part turn into laughter. I would that my life remain a tear and a smile. – Kahlil Gibran

I would tell you more of Him, but how shall I? When love becomes vast love becomes wordless. And when memory is overladen it seeks the silent deep. – Kahlil Gibran

If a man loses a dear friend, he looks around and sees many friends come to console and comfort him. If a man loses his wealth, after a little thought he will realize that the delight that came from wealth will be restored by finding more. Thus he forgets his loss and is consoled. But if a man’s heart is deprived of peace, where will he find it again, how will he replace it? – Kahlil Gibran

If any of you would bring judgment the unfaithful wife, let him also weight the heart of her husband in scales, and measure his soul with measurements. – Kahlil Gibran

If aught I have said is truth, that truth shall reveal itself in a clearer voice, and in words more kin to your thoughts. – Kahlil Gibran

If I accept the sunshine and warmth, then I must also accept the thunder and lightning. – Kahlil Gibran

If I could take your troubles I would toss them into the sea, But all these things I’m finding Are impossible for me. I cannot build a mountain Or catch a rainbow fair, But let me be what I know best, A friend that is always there. – Kahlil Gibran

If I extend an empty hand and in retrieving it and finding it still empty, I feel disappointment, that is foolishness; yet if I extend a hand which is full and yet find no one to receive it, then that is hopelessness. – Kahlil Gibran

If in the twilight of memory we should meet once more, we shall speak again together and you shall sing to me a deeper song. – Kahlil Gibran

If in the twilight of memory we should meet once more,we shall speak again together and you shall sing to me a deeper song. And if our hands should meet in another dream we shall build another tower in the sky. – Kahlil Gibran

If indeed you must be candid, be candid beautifully. – Kahlil Gibran

If it were not for guests all houses would be graves. – Kahlil Gibran

If it’s a despot you would dethrone, see first that his throne erected within you is destroyed. – Kahlil Gibran

If my survival caused another to perish, then death would be sweeter and more beloved. – Kahlil Gibran

If the grandfather of the grandfather of Jesus had known what was hidden within him, he would have stood humble and awe-struck before his soul. – Kahlil Gibran

If the other person injures you, you may forget the injury; but if you injure him you will always remember. – Kahlil Gibran

If we were to all sit in a circle and confess our sins, we would laugh at each other for lack of originality. – Kahlil Gibran

If winter should say, ‘Spring is in my heart,’ who would believe winter? – Kahlil Gibran

If you are poor, shun association with him who measures men with the yardstick of riches. – Kahlil Gibran

if you cannot but weep when your soul summons you to prayer, she should spur you again and yet again, though weeping, until you shall come laughing – Kahlil Gibran

If you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work. – Kahlil Gibran

If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. And if they don’t, they never were. – Kahlil Gibran

If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. If they don’t, they never were. – Kahlil Gibran

If you reveal your secrets to the wind, you should not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees. – Kahlil Gibran

If you sing of beauty though alone in the heart of the desert you will have an audience. – Kahlil Gibran

If you would behold the spirit of death, open your heart wide unto the body of life. For life and death are one, even as the river and sea are one. – Kahlil Gibran

If you would possess you must not claim. – Kahlil Gibran

If your heart is a volcano, how shall you expect flowers to bloom? – Kahlil Gibran

If your knowledge teaches you not the value of things, and frees you not from the bondage to matter, you shall never come near the throne of Truth. – Kahlil Gibran

If your knowledge teaches you not to rise above human weakness and misery and lead your fellow man on the right path, you are indeed a man of little worth and will remain such till Judgment Day. – Kahlil Gibran

In a dream I saw Jesus and My God Pan sitting together in the heart of the forest. They laughed at each other’s speech, with the brook that ran near them, and the laughter of Jesus was the merrier. And they conversed long. – Kahlil Gibran

In battling evil, excess is good; for he who is moderate in announcing the truth is presenting half-truth. He conceals the other half out of fear of people’s wrath. – Kahlil Gibran

In every aspect of the day Jesus was aware of the Father. He beheld Him in the clouds and in the shadows of the clouds that pass over the earth. – Kahlil Gibran

In every winter’s heart there is a quivering spring, and behind the veil of each night there is a shining dawn. – Kahlil Gibran

In friendship let there be laughter and sharing of pleasures. – Kahlil Gibran

In much of your talking, thinking is half murdered. – Kahlil Gibran

In one drop of water are found all the secrets of all the oceans. – Kahlil Gibran

In one drop of water are found all the secrets of all the oceans; in one aspect of You are found all the aspects of existence. – Kahlil Gibran

In the autumn I gathered all my sorrows and buried them in my garden. And when April returned and spring came to wed the earth, there grew in my garden beautiful flowers unlike all other flowers. And my neighbors came to behold them, and they all said to me, “When autumn comes again, at seeding time, will you not give us of the seeds of these flowers that we may have them in our gardens?” – Kahlil Gibran

In the depth of my soul there is A wordless song – a song that lives In the seed of my heart. It refuses to melt with ink on Parchment; it engulfs my affection In a transparent cloak and flows, But not upon my lips. – Kahlil Gibran

In the depth of my soul there is a wordless song. – Kahlil Gibran

In the depth of your hopes and desires lies your silent knowledge of the beyond… – Kahlil Gibran

In the depths of your hopes and desires, lies your silent knowledge of the beyond, and like seeds dreaming beneath the snow, your heart dreams of spring. Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity. – Kahlil Gibran

In the mouth of Society are many diseased teeth, decayed to the bones of the jaws. But Society makes no effort to have them extracted and be rid of the affliction. It contents itself with gold fillings. – Kahlil Gibran

In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures. – Kahlil Gibran

In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed. – Kahlil Gibran

In truth we gaze but do not see, and hearken but do not hear; we eat and drink but do not taste. And there lies the difference between Jesus of Nazareth and ourselves. His senses were all continually made new, and the world to Him was always a new world. – Kahlil Gibran

In truth you owe naught to any man. You owe to all men. – Kahlil Gibran

Inspiration is in seeing a part of the whole with the part of the whole in you. – Kahlil Gibran

Inspiration will always sing; inspiration will never explain. – Kahlil Gibran

Is not dread of thirst when your well is full, the thirst that is unquenchable? – Kahlil Gibran

Is not the beautiful moon, that inspires poets, the same moon which angers the silence of the sea with a terrible roar? – Kahlil Gibran

Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven? – Kahlil Gibran

It has been said that next to hunger and thirst, our most basic human need is for storytelling. – Kahlil Gibran

It is not a garment I cast off this day, but a skin that I tear with my own hands. – Kahlil Gibran

It is not the image you would see nor the song you would hear, but rather an image you see though you close your eyes and a song you hear though you shut your ears. – Kahlil Gibran

It is not the sap within the furrowed bark, nor a wing attached to a claw, But rather a garden forever in bloom and a flock of angels forever in flight. – Kahlil Gibran

It is only when you are pursued that you become swift. – Kahlil Gibran

It is slavery to live in the mind unless it has become part of the body – Kahlil Gibran

It is well to give when asked but it is better to give unasked, through understanding. – Kahlil Gibran

It is well to give when asked, but it is better to give unasked, through understanding; and to the open-handed the search for one who shall receive is joy greater than giving. – Kahlil Gibran

It is wrong to think that love comes from long companionship and persevering courtship. Love is the offspring of spiritual affinity and unless that affinity is created in a moment, it will not be created for years or even generations. – Kahlil Gibran

It takes a minute to have a crush on someone, an hour to like someone, and a day to love someone… but it takes a lifetime to forget someone. – Kahlil Gibran

It was but yesterday I thought myself a fragment quivering without rhythm in the sphere of life. Now I know that I am the sphere, and all life in rhythmic fragments moves within me. – Kahlil Gibran

It was in my heart to help a little because I was helped much. – Kahlil Gibran

Jesus was not sent here to teach the people to build magnificent churches and temples amidst the cold wretched huts and dismal hovels. He came to make the human heart a temple, and the soul an altar, and the mind a priest. – Kahlil Gibran

Joy and sorrow are inseparable. . . together they come and when one sits alone with you . . remember that the other is asleep upon your bed. – Kahlil Gibran

Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh, and the greatness which does not bow before children. – Kahlil Gibran

Keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life. – Kahlil Gibran

Know, therefore, that from the greater silence I shall return… Forget not that I shall come back to you… A little while, a moment of rest upon the wind, and another woman shall bear me. – Kahlil Gibran

Knowledge and understanding are life’s faithful companions who will never prove untrue to you. For knowledge is your crown, and understanding your staff; and when they are with you, you can possess no greater treasures. – Kahlil Gibran

Knowledge cultivates your seeds and does not sow in you seeds. – Kahlil Gibran

Knowledge of the self is the mother of all knowledge. So it is incumbent on me to know my self, to know it completely, to know its minutiae, its characteristics, its subtleties, and its very atoms. – Kahlil Gibran

Learn the words of wisdom uttered by the wise and apply them in your own life. Live them – but do not a make a show of reciting them, for he who repeats what he does not understand is no better than an ass loaded with books. – Kahlil Gibran

Let ignorance reproduce itself until it is weary of its own offspring. – Kahlil Gibran

Let me, O let me bathe my soul in colours; let me swallow the sunset and drink the rainbow. – Kahlil Gibran

Let passion fill your sails, but let reason be your rudder. – Kahlil Gibran

Let the earth take that which is hers; for I, man, have no end – Kahlil Gibran

Let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit. – Kahlil Gibran

Let there be spaces in your togetherness. – Kahlil Gibran

Let there be spaces in your togetherness…just as strings of a lute dance alone though they quiver with the same music. – Kahlil Gibran

Let us disperse from our aloofness and serve the weak who made us strong, and cleanse the country in which we live. Let us teach this miserable nation to smile and rejoice with heaven’s bounty and glory of life and freedom. – Kahlil Gibran

Let your bending in the Archer’s hand be for gladness, for even as he loves the arrow that flies, so he loves also the bow that is stable. – Kahlil Gibran

Let your best be for your friend… – Kahlil Gibran

Let your home be you mast and not your anchor. – Kahlil Gibran

Life has two halves: one patient and one afire. Love is the fiery half. Make me, O Lord, food for the flames. – Kahlil Gibran

Life is but a sleep disturbed by dreaming, prompted by the will; the saddened soul with sadness hides it’s secrets, and the gay, with thrill. – Kahlil Gibran

Life is indeed darkness save when there is urge, and all urge is blind save when there is knowledge, and all knowledge is vain save when there is work, and all work is empty save when there is love. – Kahlil Gibran

Life is not only merriment,It is desire and determination. – Kahlil Gibran

Life is the mistress to be wooed. – Kahlil Gibran

Life is weaker than Death and Death is weaker than Truth. – Kahlil Gibran

Life unfolds itself in mysteries ways. – Kahlil Gibran

Life without Freedom is like a body without a soul, and Freedom without Thought is like a confused spirit. . . . Life, Freedom and Thought are three-in-one, and are everlasting and shall never pass away. – Kahlil Gibran

Life without liberty is like a body without spirit. – Kahlil Gibran

Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit. – Kahlil Gibran

Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit.” “Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself. To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving – Kahlil Gibran

Like sheaves of corn it gathers you unto itself. It threshes you to make you naked. It sifts you to free you from your husks. It grinds you to whiteness. It kneads you until you are pliant. And then it assigns you to its sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God’s sacred feast. All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life’s Heart. – Kahlil Gibran

Like the ocean is your god-self; It remains for ever undefiled. And like the ether it lifts but the winged. Even like the sun is your god-self; It knows not the ways of the mole nor seeks it the holes of the serpent. But your god-self does not dwell alone in your being. Much in you is still man, and much in you is not yet man, But a shapeless pigmy that walks asleep in the mist searching for its own awakening. – Kahlil Gibran

Like the seeds dreaming beneath the snow your heart dreams of spring. – Kahlil Gibran

Limited love asks for possession of the beloved, but the unlimited asks only for itself. – Kahlil Gibran

Listen to the women when she looks at you, not when she talks to you. – Kahlil Gibran

Long were the days of pain I have spent within its walls, and long were the nights of aloneness; and who can depart from his pain and his aloneness without regret? – Kahlil Gibran

Love and doubt have never been on speaking terms. – Kahlil Gibran

Love descends upon our souls by the will of God and not by the demand or the plea of the individual. – Kahlil Gibran

Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself. – Kahlil Gibran

Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself. Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; For love is sufficient unto love. – Kahlil Gibran

Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself, but if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires. – Kahlil Gibran

Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself. – Kahlil Gibran

Love has the power that dispels death; charm that conquers the enemy. – Kahlil Gibran

Love is a gracious host to his guests though to the unbidden his house is a mirage and a mockery. – Kahlil Gibran

Love is a magic ray emitted from the burning core of the soul and illuminating the surrounding earth. It enables us to perceive life as a beautiful dream between one awakening and another. – Kahlil Gibran

Love is a sacred mystery. To those who love, it remains forever wordless; But to those who do not love, it may be but a heartless jest. – Kahlil Gibran

Love is all I can possess and no one can deprive me of it. – Kahlil Gibran

Love is life sharing, not for hurt, Love is alive both not ambiguous. Love is whole life, not an affair. – Kahlil Gibran

Love is not without its flaws. The stronger the love, the more it tests you. Compassion and empathy will make true love persist. – Kahlil Gibran

Love is quivering happiness. – Kahlil Gibran

Love is the gentle smile upon the lips of beauty. – Kahlil Gibran

Love is the only flower that grows and blossoms without the aid of the seasons – Kahlil Gibran

Love is the only freedom in the world because it so elevates the spirit that the laws of humanity and the phenomena of nature do not alter its course. – Kahlil Gibran

Love is the veil between lover and lover. – Kahlil Gibran

Love is timeless…. Death does not separate the lover from the beloved. – Kahlil Gibran

Love is trembling happiness. – Kahlil Gibran

Love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation. – Kahlil Gibran

Love one another, but make not a bond of love… – Kahlil Gibran

love one another, but make not a bond of love: let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup. give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. – Kahlil Gibran

Love one another, but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. – Kahlil Gibran

Love passes by us, robed in meekness; but we flee from her in fear, or hide in the darkness; or else pursue her, to do evil in her name. – Kahlil Gibran

Love possesses not nor will it be possessed, for love is sufficient unto love. – Kahlil Gibran

Love prides itself not only in the one who loves, but also in the beloved. – Kahlil Gibran

Love provided me with a tongue and tears. – Kahlil Gibran

Love that does not renew itself every day becomes a habit and in turn a slavery. – Kahlil Gibran

Love that is cleansed by tears will remain eternally pure and beautiful. – Kahlil Gibran

Love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course. – Kahlil Gibran

Love… it surrounds every being and extends slowly to embrace all that shall be. – Kahlil Gibran

Lovers embrace that which is between them rather than each other.- Kahlil Gibran

Madness is the first step towards unselfishness. Be mad and tell us what is behind the veil of “sanity”. The purpose of life is to bring us closer to those secrets, and madness is the only means. – Kahlil Gibran

Make me, oh God, the prey of the Lion, ere you make the rabbit my prey – Kahlil Gibran

Man is like the foam of the sea, that floats upon the surface of the water. When the wind blows, it vanishes, as if it had never been. Thus are our lives blown away by Death. – Kahlil Gibran

Man is two men; one is awake in darkness, the other asleep in light.- Kahlil Gibran

Man struggles to find life outside himself, unaware that the life he is seeking is within him. – Kahlil Gibran

Many a doctrine is like a window pane. We see truth through it but it divides us from truth. – Kahlil Gibran

Many are the fools who say that Jesus stood in His own path and opposed Himself; that He knew not His own mind, and in the absence of that knowledge confounded Himself. – Kahlil Gibran

Many are the places of worship, but few indeed are those who worship in Spirit and in truth. – Kahlil Gibran

Many of us spend our whole lives running from feeling with the mistaken belief that you can not bear the pain. But you have already borne the pain. What you have not done is feel all you are beyond that pain. – Kahlil Gibran

March on. Do not tarry. To go forward is to move toward perfection. March on, and fear not the thorns, or the sharp stones on life’s path. – Kahlil Gibran

Marriage is like a golden ring in a chain, whose beginning is a glance and whose ending is eternity. – Kahlil Gibran

Marriage is like a temple resting on two pillars. If they come too close to each other the temple will collapse. – Kahlil Gibran

Marriage is the union of two divinities that a third might be born on earth. It is the union of two souls in a strong love for the abolishment of separateness. It is that higher unity which fuses the separate unities within the two spirits. It is the golden ring in a chain whose beginning is a glance, and whose ending is Eternity. It is the pure rain that falls from an unblemished sky to fructify and bless the fields of divine Nature. – Kahlil Gibran

Men who do not forgive women their little faults will never enjoy their great virtues. – Kahlil Gibran

Men would bless you or curse you; The curse, a protest against failure, The blessing, a hymn of the hunter Who comes back from the hills With provision for his mate. – Kahlil Gibran

Miserable is the man who loves a woman and takes her for his wife, pouring at her feet the sweat of his skin and the blood of his body and the life of his heart, and placing her in the hands of the fruit of his toil and the revenue of his diligence; for when he slowly wakes up, he finds that the heart that he endeavored to buy is given away freely and in sincerity to another man for the enjoyment of its hidden secrets and deepest love. – Kahlil Gibran

Money is like love; it kills slowly and painfully the one who withholds it, and enlivens the other who turns it on his fellow man. – Kahlil Gibran

Most people who ask for advice from others have already resolved to act as it pleases them. – Kahlil Gibran

Mother: the most beautiful word on the lips of mankind. – Kahlil Gibran

Much of your pain is self-chosen. – Kahlil Gibran

Much of your pain is self-chosen. It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self. Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquility: For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen, And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has moistened with His own sacred tears. – Kahlil Gibran

Much of your pain is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self. – Kahlil Gibran

Music is the language of the spirit. It opens the secret of life bringing peace, abolishing strife. – Kahlil Gibran

My brothers, seek counsel of one another, for therein lies the way out of error and futile repentance. The wisdom of the many is your shield against tyranny. For when we turn to one another for counsel we reduce the number of our enemies. – Kahlil Gibran

My friend, be not like him who sits by his fireside and watches the fire go out, then blows vainly upon the dead ashes. Do not give up hope or yield to despair because of that which is past, for to bewail the irretrievable is the worst of human frailties. – Kahlil Gibran

My friend, I am not what I seem. Seeming is but a garment I wear — a care-woven garment that protects me from thy questionings and thee from my negligence. The “I” in me, my friend, dwells in the house of silence, and therein it shall remain for ever more, unperceived, unapproachable. – Kahlil Gibran

My friends: Music is the language of spirits. Its melody is like the frolicsome breeze that makes the strings quiver with love. When the gentle fingers of Music knock at the door of our feelings, they awaken memories that have long lain hidden in the depths of the Past. The sad strains of Music bring us mournful recollections; and her quiet strains bring us joyful memories. The sound of strings makes us weep at the departure of a dear one, or makes us smile at the peace God has bestowed upon us. – Kahlil Gibran

My God, my aim and my fulfillment; I am thy yesterday and thou are my tomorrow. I am they root in the earth and thou art my flower in the sky, and together we grow before the face of the sun. – Kahlil Gibran

My house says to me, “do not leave me, for here dwells your past.” And the road says to me, “Come and follow me, for I am your future.” And I say to both my house and the road, “I have no past, nor have I a future. If I stay here, there is a going in my staying; and if I go there is a staying in my going. Only love and death change all things.” – Kahlil Gibran

My Lebanon is a flock of birds fluttering in the early morning as shepherds lead their sheep into the meadow & rising in the evening as farmers return from their fields and vineyards.You have your Lebanon and its people. I have my Lebanon and its people. – Kahlil Gibran

My loneliness was born when men praised my talkative faults and blamed my silent virtues. – Kahlil Gibran

My proof convinces the ignorant, and the wise man’s proof convinces me. But he whose reasoning falls between wisdom and ignorance, I neither can convince him, nor can he convince me. – Kahlil Gibran

My Soul gave me good counsel, teaching me never to delight in praise or to be distressed by reproach. Before my Soul taught me, I doubted the value of my accomplishments until the passing days sent someone who would extol or disparage them. But now I know that trees blossom in the spring and give their fruits in the summer without any desire for accolades. And they scatter their leaves abroad in the fall and denude themselves in the winter without fear of reproof. – Kahlil Gibran

My Soul gave me good counsel, teaching me to love what the people abhor and to show good will toward the one they hate. It showed me that Love is a property not of the lover but of the beloved. Before my Soul taught me, Love was for me a delicate thread stretched between two adjacent pegs, but now it has been transformed into a halo; its first is its last, and its last is its first. It encompasses every being, slowly expanding to embrace all that ever will be. – Kahlil Gibran

My yearning is my cup, my burning thirst is my drink, and my solitude is my intoxication; I do not and shall not quench my thirst. But in this burning that is never extinguished is a joy that never wanes.

Nature reaches out to us with welcoming arms, and bids us enjoy her beauty; but we dread her silence and rush into the crowded cities, there to huddle like sheep fleeing from a ferocious wolf. – Kahlil Gibran

No human relation gives one possession in another—every two souls are absolutely different. In friendship or in love, the two side by side raise hands together to find what one cannot reach alone. – Kahlil Gibran

No longing remains unfulfilled. – Kahlil Gibran

No lower can a man descend than to interpret his dreams into gold and silver. – Kahlil Gibran

No man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of your knowledge. The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple, among his followers, gives not of his wisdom but rather of his faith and his lovingness. If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind. – Kahlil Gibran

No man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of your knowledge. – Kahlil Gibran

No man can reveal to you nothing but that which already lies half-asleep in the dawning of your knowledge. – Kahlil Gibran

Nor shall derision prove powerful against those who listen to humanity or those who follow in the footsteps of divinity, for they shall live forever. Forever. – Kahlil Gibran

Now I realize that the trees blossom in Spring and bear fruit in Summer without seeking praise; and they drop their leaves in Autumn and become naked in Winter without fearing blame. – Kahlil Gibran

Now let us play hide and seek. Should you hide in my heart it would not be difficult to find you. But should you hide behind your own shell, then it would be useless for anyone to seek you. – Kahlil Gibran

O love, whose lordly hand Has bridled my desires, And raised my hunger and my thirst To dignity and pride, Let not the strong in me and the constant Eat the bread or drink the wine That tempt my weaker self. Let me rather starve, And let my heart parch with thirst, And let me die and perish, Ere I stretch my hand To a cup you did not fill, Or a bowl you did not bless. – Kahlil Gibran

Of life’s two chief prizes, beauty and truth, I found the first in a loving heart and the second in a laborer’s hand. – Kahlil Gibran

Of the good in you I can speak, but not of the evil. For what is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst? Verily when good is hungry it seeks food even in dark caves, and when it thirsts it drinks even of dead waters. – Kahlil Gibran

Of time you would make a stream upon whose bank you would sit and watch its flowing. Yet the timeless in you is aware of life’s timelessness, And knows that ‘yesterday is but today’s memory and tomorrow is today’s dream. – Kahlil Gibran

Often times I have hated in self-defense; if I were stronger I would not have used such a weapon. – Kahlil Gibran

Oh heart, if one should say to you that the soul perishes like the body, answer that the flower withers, but the seed remains. – Kahlil Gibran

Oh, Lord God, have mercy on me and mend my broken wings. – Kahlil Gibran

Once I, deemed myself a poet. But when I stood before him in Bethany I knew what is was to hold an instrument with but a single string before one who commands all instruments – Kahlil Gibran

One day you will ask me which is more important? My life or yours? I will say mine and you will walk away not knowing that you are my life. – Kahlil Gibran

One may not reach the dawn save by path of night. – Kahlil Gibran

One may not reach the dawn save by the path of the night. – Kahlil Gibran

Only love and death will change all things. – Kahlil Gibran

Only once have I been made mute. It was when a man asked me, “Who are you?”- Kahlil Gibran

Only those beneath me can envy or hate me. I have never been envied nor hated; I am above no one. Only those above me can praise or belittle me. I have never been praised nor belittled; I am below no one. – Kahlil Gibran

Only those return to Eternity Who on earth seek out Eternity. – Kahlil Gibran

Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing. And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb. And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance. – Kahlil Gibran

Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing. – Kahlil Gibran

Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing. And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb. And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance. – Kahlil Gibran

Only yesterday I was no different than them, yet I was saved. I am explaining to you the way of life of a people who say every sort of wicked thing about me because I sacrificed their friendship to gain my own soul. I left the dark paths of their duplicity and turned my eyes toward the light where there is salvation, truth, and justice. They have exiled me now from their society, yet I am content. Mankind only exiles the one whose large spirit rebels against injustice and tyranny. He who does not prefer exile to servility is not free in the true and necessary sense of freedom. – Kahlil Gibran

Our anxiety does not come from thinking about the future, but from wanting to control it. – Kahlil Gibran

Our God, who art our winged self, it is thy will in us that willeth. It is thy desire in us that desireth. It is thy urge in us that would turn our nights, which are thine, into days which are thine also. We cannot ask thee for aught, for thou knowest our needs before they are born in us: Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. – Kahlil Gibran

Our pain carves out a larger space for love to fill. – Kahlil Gibran

Our worst fault is our preoccupation with the faults of others. – Kahlil Gibran

Out of my deeper heart a bird rose and flew skywards. Higher and higher did it rise, yet larger and larger did it grow. At first it was but like a swallow, then a lark, then an eagle, then as vast as a spring cloud, and then it filled the starry heavens. Out of my heart a bird flew skywards. And it waxed larger as it flew. Yet it left not my heart. – Kahlil Gibran

Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars. – Kahlil Gibran

Pain and foolishness lead to great bliss and complete knowledge, for Eternal Wisdom created nothing under the sun in vain. – Kahlil Gibran

Passionate love is a quenchless thirst…. – Kahlil Gibran

People of Orphalese, beauty is life when life unveils her holy face. But you are life and you are the veil. Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror. But you are eternity and you are the mirror. – Kahlil Gibran

People of Orphalese, you can muffle the drum, and you can loosen the strings of the lyre, but who shall command the skylark not to sing? – Kahlil Gibran

Perhaps a man may commit suicide in self-defense. – Kahlil Gibran

Perhaps time’s definition of coal is the diamond. – Kahlil Gibran

Perplexity is the beginning of knowledge. – Kahlil Gibran

Persecution cannot harm him who stands by Truth. Did not Socrates fall proudly a victim in body? Was not Paul stoned for the sake of the Truth? It is our inner selves that hurt us when we disobey it, and it kills us when we betray it. – Kahlil Gibran

Philosophy began when man ate the produce of the earth and suffered indigestion. – Kahlil Gibran

Philosophy’s work is finding the shortest path between two points. – Kahlil Gibran

Pity it is we drowse too soon Pity it is we fall asleep Ere our song encompass the height Ere our hand inherit the deep – Kahlil Gibran

Pity the nation whose statesman is a fox, whose philosopher is a juggler, and whose art is the art of patching and mimicking. Pity the nation that welcomes its new ruler with trumpetings, and farewells him with hootings, only to welcome another ruler with trumpetings again. Pity the nation whose sages are dumb with years and whose strong men are yet in the cradle. Pity the nation divided into fragments, each fragment deeming itself a nation. – Kahlil Gibran

Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary. – Kahlil Gibran

Poetry is not the opinion stated. It is a song that appears instead of a bloody wound or a smiling mouth. – Kahlil Gibran

Poetry, my dear friends, is a sacred incarnation of a smile. Poetry is a sigh that dries the tears. Poetry is a spirit who dwells in the soul, whose nourishment is the heart, whose wine is affection. Poetry that comes not in this form is a false messiah. – Kahlil Gibran

Poverty hides itself in thought before it surrenders to purses. – Kahlil Gibran

Poverty is a veil that obscures the face of greatness. An appeal is a mask covering the face of tribulation. – Kahlil Gibran

Prayer is the song of the heart. It reaches the ear of God even if it is mingled with the cry and the tumult of a thousand men. – Kahlil Gibran

Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing toward what will be. – Kahlil Gibran

Qualities of Good Citizens… is to admire what others have created in love and faith – Kahlil Gibran

Real beauty lies in the spiritual accord that is called love which can exist between a man and a woman…. – Kahlil Gibran

Reason is not like the goods sold in the market places–the more plentiful they are, the less they are worth. Reason’s worth waxes with her abundance. But were she sold in the market, it is only the wise man who would understand her true value. – Kahlil Gibran

Reason without learning is like the untilled soil, or like the human body that lacks nourishment. – Kahlil Gibran

Reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction. – Kahlil Gibran

Rebellion without truth is like spring in a bleak, arid desert. – Kahlil Gibran

Remember that Divinity is the true self of Man. It cannot be sold for gold; neither can it be heaped up as are the riches of the world today. The rich man has cast off his Divinity, and has clung to his gold. And the young today have forsaken their Divinity and pursue self-indulgence and pleasure. – Kahlil Gibran

Remember, one just man causes the Devil greater affliction than a million blind believers. – Kahlil Gibran

Remembrance is a form of meeting. – Kahlil Gibran

Rest in reason. Move in Passion. – Kahlil Gibran

Rob a neighbour with a smile. – Kahlil Gibran

Sadness is but a wall between two gardens. – Kahlil Gibran

Safeguarding the rights of others is the most noble and beautiful end of a human being. – Kahlil Gibran

Said a skunk to a tube-rose, “See how swiftly I run, while you cannot walk nor even creep.” Said the tube-rose to the skunk, “Oh, most noble swift runner, please run swiftly!” – Kahlil Gibran

Said one oyster to a neighboring oyster, “I have a very great pain within me. It is heavy and round and I am in distress.” And the other oyster replied with haughty complacence, “Praise be to the heavens and to the sea, I have no pain within me. I am well and whole both within and without.” At that moment a crab was passing by and heard the two oysters, and he said to the one who was well and whole both within and without, “Yes, you are well and whole; but the pain that your neighbor bears is a pearl of exceeding beauty.” – Kahlil Gibran

Say not, I have found the path of the soul Say rather, I have met the soul walking upon my path. – Kahlil Gibran

Say not, ‘I have found the truth,’ but rather, ‘I have found a truth.’ – Kahlil Gibran

Say not, ‘I have found the truth,’ but rather, ‘I have found a truth.’ Say not, ‘ I have found the path of the soul.’ Say rather, ‘I have met the soul walking upon my path.’ For the soul walks upon all paths. The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed. The soul unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals. – Kahlil Gibran

Saying this, he turned his head toward the window as if he were trying to solve the problems of human existence by concentrating on the beauty of the universe. – Kahlil Gibran

Sayings remain meaningless until they are embodied in habits. – Kahlil Gibran

Science and religion are in full accord, but science and faith are in complete discord. – Kahlil Gibran

Seek not the depths of your knowledge with staff or sounding line. For self is a sea boundless and measureless. – Kahlil Gibran

Seek ye counsel of the aged for their eyes have looked on the faces of the years and their ears have hardened to the voices of Life. Even if their counsel is displeasing to you, pay heed to them. – Kahlil Gibran

Seven times have I despised my soul: The sixth time when she despised the ugliness of a face, and knew not that it was one of her own masks. – Kahlil Gibran

She danced the dance of flames and fire, and the dance of swords and spears; she danced the dance of stars and the dance of space, and then she danced the dance of flowers in the wind. – Kahlil Gibran

Should we all confess our sins to one another we would all laugh at one another for our lack of originality – Kahlil Gibran

Should you really open your eyes and see, you would behold your image in all images. And should you open your ears and listen, you would hear your own voice in all voices. – Kahlil Gibran

Sit by me, my beloved, and listen to my heart; smile, for your happiness is a symbol of our future. – Kahlil Gibran

Solitude has soft, silky hands, but with strong fingers it grasps the heart and makes it ache with sorrow. – Kahlil Gibran

Solitude is a silent storm that breaks down all our dead branches; yet it sends our living roots deeper into the living heart of the living earth. – Kahlil Gibran

Some of our children are our justifications and some are but our regrets – Kahlil Gibran

Some think I wink at them when I shut my eyes to avoid their sight. – Kahlil Gibran

Some who are too scrupulous to steal your possessions nevertheless see no wrong in tampering with your thoughts. – Kahlil Gibran

Sorrow is too great to exist in small hearts. – Kahlil Gibran

Sow a seed and the earth will yield you a flower. Dream your dream to the sky and it will bring you your beloved. – Kahlil Gibran

Spare me the political events and power struggles, as the whole earth is my homeland and all men are my fellow countrymen. – Kahlil Gibran

Spiritual awakening is the most essential thing in man’s life, and it is the sole purpose of being. Is not civilization, in all its tragic forms, a supreme motive for spiritual awakening? – Kahlil Gibran

Spring is beautiful everywhere, but it is more than beautiful in Lebanon. Spring is the spirit of an unknown God speeding through the world, which, as it reaches Lebanon, pauses, because now it is as at home with the souls of the Prophets and Kings hovering over the land, chanting with the brooks of Judea, the eternal Psalms of Solomon, renewing with the Cedars of Lebanon memories of an ancient glory. – Kahlil Gibran

Strange that creatures without backbones have the hardest shells. – Kahlil Gibran

Strange that we all defend our wrongs with more vigor than we do our rights. – Kahlil Gibran

Strange, the desire for certain pleasures is a part of my pain. – Kahlil Gibran

Take then this Book, look into it, and show me when Jesus was not forgiving. Read this diving tragedy and tell me where He speaks without mercy and compassion. You visit not the sick and the imprisoned; nor do you feed the hungry or give refuge to the stranger or comfort to the mourner. – Kahlil Gibran

Tears have cleansed my eyes, and errors have taught me the language of the hearts. – Kahlil Gibran

Tell your secret to the wind, but don’t blame it for telling the trees. – Kahlil Gibran

Tenderness and kindness are not signs of weakness and despair, but manifestations of strength and resolutions. – Kahlil Gibran

That deed which in our guilt we today call weakness, will appear tomorrow as an essential link in the complete chain of Man. – Kahlil Gibran

That deepest thing, that recognition, that knowledge, that sense of kinship began the first time I saw you,and it is the same now – only a thousand times deeper and tenderer. I shall love you to eternity. I loved you long before we met in this flesh. I knew that when I first saw you. It was destiny. We are together like this and nothing can shake us apart. – Kahlil Gibran

That which seems most feeble and bewildered in you is the strongest and most determined. Is it not your breath that has erected and hardened the structure of your bones? – Kahlil Gibran

The “I” in me, my friend, dwells in the house of silence, and therein it shall remain for ever more, unperceived, unapproachable. – Kahlil Gibran

The ageless melody, unheard, heals; the healing vision, unseen, leads; the true leaders, immortal, know…. – Kahlil Gibran

The appearance of things changes according to the emotions; and thus we see magic and beauty in them, while the magic and beauty are really in ourselves. – Kahlil Gibran

The best love come from the heart, not from the mouth. – Kahlil Gibran

The best of man is he who blushes when you praise him and remains silent when you defame him. – Kahlil Gibran

The biggest thing in today’s sorrow is the memory of yesterday’s joy. – Kahlil Gibran

The bird has an honor that man does not have. Man lives in the traps of his abdicated laws and traditions; but the birds live according to the natural law of God who causes the earth to turn around the sun. – Kahlil Gibran

The brooks flow to their lover, the sea, and the flowers smile at the object of their passion, the light. The mist rolls down to its beloved, the valley. And I? In me is what brooks do not know, what flowers do not hear, what the mist does not apprehend. You see me alone in my love, solitary in my yearning. – Kahlil Gibran

The chemist who can extract from his heart’s elements compassion, respect, longing, patience, regret, surprise, and forgiveness and compound them into one can create that atom which is called love. – Kahlil Gibran

The chemist who can extract from his heart’s elements, compassion, respect, longing, patience, regret, surprise, and forgiveness and compound them into one can create that atom which is called love. – Kahlil Gibran

The creator gives no heed to the critic unless he becomes a barren inventor. – Kahlil Gibran

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven? – Kahlil Gibran

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain… When you are joyous look deep into your heart and you will find that it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. – Kahlil Gibran

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. – Kahlil Gibran

The earth is like a beautiful bride who needs no manmade jewels to heighten her loveliness… – Kahlil Gibran

The envier praises me unknowingly. – Kahlil Gibran

The eye of a human being is a microscope, which makes the world seem bigger than it really is. – Kahlil Gibran

The feelings we live through in love and in loneliness are simply, for us, what high tide and low tide are to the sea. – Kahlil Gibran

The first glance from the eyes of the beloved is like the spirit that moved upon the face of the waters, giving birth to heaven and earth. – Kahlil Gibran

The first thought of God was an angel. The first word of God was a man – Kahlil Gibran

The fool sees naught but folly; and the madman only madness. Yesterday I asked a foolish man to count the fools among us. He laughed and said, “This is too hard a thing to do, and it will take too long. Were it not better to count only the wise?” – Kahlil Gibran

The giving and receiving of pleasure is a need and an ecstasy. – Kahlil Gibran

The heart’s affections are divided like the branches of the cedar tree; if the tree loses one strong branch; it will suffer but it does not die; it will pour all its vitality into the next branch so that it will grow and fill the empty place. – Kahlil Gibran

The highest virtue here may be least in another world. – Kahlil Gibran

The human heart cries out for help; the human soul implores us for deliverance; but we do not heed their cries, for we neither hear nor understand. But the man who hears and understands we call mad, and flee from him. Thus the nights pass, and we live in unawareness; and the days greet us and embrace us. But we live in constant dread of day and night. – Kahlil Gibran

The just is close to the people’s heart, but the merciful is close to the heart of God. – Kahlil Gibran

The life of a flower is longing and fulfilment. A tear and a smile. – Kahlil Gibran

The lights of stars that were extinguished ages ago still reaches us. So it is with great men who died centuries ago, but still reach us with the radiations of their personalities. – Kahlil Gibran

The longing for paradise is paradise itself. – Kahlil Gibran

The love of a parent for a child is the love that should grow towards separation. – Kahlil Gibran

The lust for comfort kills the passions of the soul. – Kahlil Gibran

The lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house as a guest, and then becomes a host, and then a master. – Kahlil Gibran

The lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and then becomes a host, and then a master. – Kahlil Gibran

The most pitiful among men is he who turns his dreams into silver and gold. – Kahlil Gibran

The most solid stone in the structure is the lowest one in the foundation. – Kahlil Gibran

The most wonderful thing, Mary, is that you and I are always walking together, hand in hand, in a strangely beautiful world, unknown to other people. We both stretch one hand to receive from Life – and Life is generous indeed. – Kahlil Gibran

The mother is everything – she is our consolation in sorrow, our hope in misery, and our strength in weakness. She is the source of love, mercy, sympathy, and forgiveness. He who loses his mother loses a pure soul who blesses and guards him constantly – Kahlil Gibran

The mute grain turns to love songs when swallowed by the nightingale. – Kahlil Gibran

The nearest to my heart are a king without a kingdom and a poor man who does not know how to beg. – Kahlil Gibran

The obvious is that which is never seen until someone expresses it simply. – Kahlil Gibran

The only time a juggler / Appeals to me / Is when I see him / Miss the ball. – Kahlil Gibran

The optimist sees the rose and not its thorns; the pessimist stares at the thorns, oblivious to the rose. – Kahlil Gibran

The person you consider ignorant and insignificant is the one who came from God, that he might learn bliss from grief and knowledge from gloom. – Kahlil Gibran

The philosopher’s soul dwells in his head, the poet’s soul is in his heart; the singer’s soul lingers about his throat, but the soul of the dancer abides in all her body. – Kahlil Gibran

The poet is a bird of strange moods. He descends from his lofty domain to tarry among us, singing; if we do not honor him he will unfold his wings and fly back to his dwelling place. – Kahlil Gibran

The power to Love is God’s greatest gift to man, For it never will be taken from the Blessed one who loves. – Kahlil Gibran

The Real me is mute, it is the acquired that is talkative. – Kahlil Gibran

The reality of the other person is not in what he reveals to you, but in what he cannot reveal to you. Therefore, if you would understand him, listen not to what he says but rather to what he does not say. – Kahlil Gibran

The saint and the sinner are twin brothers…one was born but the moment before the other. – Kahlil Gibran

The sea that calls all things unto her calls me, and I must embark. – Kahlil Gibran

The shepherd will deny the diseased lamb in fear of the flock. – Kahlil Gibran

The significance of a man is not in what he attains, but rather what he longs to attain. – Kahlil Gibran

The silence of the envious is too noisy. – Kahlil Gibran

The smallest act of kindness is worth more than the greatest intention. – Kahlil Gibran

The snow and the storm destroy the flower; but its seed they cannot kill. – Kahlil Gibran

The song of the voice is sweet, but the song of the heart is the pure voice of heaven. – Kahlil Gibran

The sorrowful spirit finds relaxation in solitude. It abhors people, as a wounded deer deserts the herd and lives in a cave until it is healed or dead. – Kahlil Gibran

The soul is an embryo in the body of Man, and the day of death is the Day of awakening, for it is the Great era of labour and the rich Hour of creation. – Kahlil Gibran

The soul unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals. – Kahlil Gibran

The strong grows in solitude where the weak withers away. – Kahlil Gibran

The subtlest beauties in our life are unseen and unheard. – Kahlil Gibran

The sun teaches to all things that grow their longing for the light. But it is night that raises them to the stars. – Kahlil Gibran

The teacher gives not of his wisdom, but rather of his faith and lovingness. – Kahlil Gibran

The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind. – Kahlil Gibran

The tears that you spill, the sorrowful, are sweeter than the laughter of snobs and the guffaws of scoffers. – Kahlil Gibran

The things which the child loves remain in the domain of the heart until old age. The most beautiful thing in life is that our souls remain hovering over the places where we once enjoyed ourselves. I am one of those who remembers those places regardless of distance or time. – Kahlil Gibran

The thirst of soul is sweeter than the wine of material things, and the fear of spirit is dearer than the security of the body. – Kahlil Gibran

The timeless in you is aware of life’s timelessness; and knows that yesterday is but today’s memory and tomorrow is today’s dream. – Kahlil Gibran

The tiny flame that lights up the human heart is like a blazing torch that comes down from heaven to light up the paths of mankind. For in one soul are contained the hopes and feelings of all Mankind. – Kahlil Gibran

The true wealth of a nation lies not in it’s gold or silver but in it’s learning, wisdom and in the uprightness of its sons. – Kahlil Gibran

The truly good is he who is one with all those who are deemed bad. – Kahlil Gibran

The truly great man is he who would master no one, and who would be mastered by none. – Kahlil Gibran

The truly just is he who feels half guilty of your misdeeds. – Kahlil Gibran

The universe is my country and the human family is my tribe. – Kahlil Gibran

The veil that clouds your eyes shall be lifted by the hands that wove it, And the clay that fills your ears shall be pierced by those fingers that kneaded it.
And you shall see.
And you shall hear. – Kahlil Gibran

The very strength that protects the heart from injury is the strength that prevents the heart from enlarging to its intended greatness within. The song of the voice is sweet, but the song of the heart is the pure voice of heaven. – Kahlil Gibran

The voice of life in me cannot reach the ear of life in you; but let us talk that we may not feel lonely. – Kahlil Gibran

The wolves prey upon the lambs in the darkness of the night, but the blood stains remain upon the stones in the valley until the dawn comes, and the sun reveals the crime to all. – Kahlil Gibran

Then a lawyer said, But what of our laws, master? And he answered: ‘You delight in laying down laws. Yet you delight more in breaking them. – Kahlil Gibran

Then it is also in my heart to be worthy of your hate. – Kahlil Gibran

There are those who give and know not pain in giving, nor do they seek joy, nor give with mindfulness of virtue; They give as in yonder valley the myrtle breathes its fragrance into space. – Kahlil Gibran

There are those who give little of the much which they have – and they give it for recognition and their hidden desire makes their gifts unwholesome. – Kahlil Gibran

There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward. – Kahlil Gibran

There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward. And there are those who give with pain, and that pain is their baptism. And there are those who give and know not pain in giving, nor do they seek joy, nor give with mindfulness of virtue; They give as in yonder valley the myrtle breathes its fragrance into space. Through the hands of such as these God speaks, and from behind their eyes he smiles upon the earth. – Kahlil Gibran

There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward. – Kahlil Gibran

There is a desire deep within the soul which drives man from the seen to the unseen, to philosophy and to the divine. – Kahlil Gibran

There is a space between man’s imagination and man’s attainment that may only be traversed by his longing. – Kahlil Gibran

There is neither religion nor science beyond beauty. – Kahlil Gibran

There is no secret in the mystery of life stronger and more beautiful than that attachment which converts the silence of a virgin’s spirit into a perpetual awareness that makes a person forget the past, for it kindles fiercely in the heart the sweet and overwhelming hope of the coming future. – Kahlil Gibran

There is within me a friend who consoles me every time that troubles overwhelm me and misfortunes afflict me. The man who does not feel friendship towards himself is a public enemy, and he who finds no confidant within himself will die of despair. For life streams out of man’s inner self and in no way from what surrounds him. – Kahlil Gibran

There must be something strangely sacred about salt. It is in our tears and in the sea. – Kahlil Gibran

These things he said in words. But much in his heart remained unsaid. For he himself could not speak his deeper secret. – Kahlil Gibran

They consider me to have sharp and penetrating vision because I see them through the mesh of a sieve. – Kahlil Gibran

They deem me mad because I will not sell my days for gold; and I deem them mad because they think my days have a price. – Kahlil Gibran

They give that they may live, for to withhold is to perish. – Kahlil Gibran

They have exiled me now from their society and I am pleased, because humanity does not exile except the one whose noble spirit rebels against despotism and oppression. He who does not prefer exile to slavery is not free by any measure of freedom – Kahlil Gibran

They say that if one understands himself, he understands all people. But I say to you, when one loves people, he learns something about himself. – Kahlil Gibran

They say: ‘If a man knew himself, he would know all mankind.’ I say: ‘If a man loved mankind, he would know something of himself. – Kahlil Gibran

They tell me: If you see a slave sleeping, do not wake him lest he be dreaming of freedom. I tell them: If you see a slave sleeping, wake him and explain to him freedom.

Thinking is always the stumbling stone to poetry. – Kahlil Gibran

This for God and this for myself; This for my soul, and this other for my body? – Kahlil Gibran

Those to whom worshiping is a window, to open but also to shut, have not yet visited the house of their souls whose windows are open from dawn to dawn. – Kahlil Gibran

Those who give you a serpent when you ask for a fish, may have nothing but serpents to give. – Kahlil Gibran

Thus with my lips have I denounced you, while my heart, bleeding within me, called you tender names. It was love lashed by its own self that spoke. It was pride half slain that fluttered in the dust. It was my hunger for your love that raged from the housetop, while my own love, kneeling in silence, prayed your forgiveness. – Kahlil Gibran

Time has been transformed, and we have changed; it has advanced and set us in motion; it has unveiled its face, inspiring us with bewilderment and exhilaration. – Kahlil Gibran

To barter and lose is better than not to go forth. – Kahlil Gibran

To be able to look back upon ones life in satisfaction, is to live twice. – Kahlil Gibran

To be closer to god, be closer to people. – Kahlil Gibran

To belittle, you have to be little. – Kahlil Gibran

To judge you by your failures is to cast blame upon the seasons for their inconstancy. – Kahlil Gibran

To know the pain of too much tenderness – Kahlil Gibran

To love life through our labor is to be intimate with life’s inmost secrets. – Kahlil Gibran

To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but at what he aspires to do. – Kahlil Gibran

Tolerance is love sick with the sickness of haughtiness. – Kahlil Gibran

Tortoises can tell you more about the road than hares. – Kahlil Gibran

Trees are poems that the earth writes upon the sky. – Kahlil Gibran

Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky, We fell them down and turn them into paper, That we may record our emptiness. – Kahlil Gibran

Trickery succeeds sometimes, but it always commits suicide. – Kahlil Gibran

True love cannot be found where it truly does not exist, Nor can it be hidden where it truly does. Anonymous Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; For love is sufficient unto love. – Kahlil Gibran

Trust in dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity. – Kahlil Gibran

Truth is a deep kindness that teaches us to be content in our everyday life and share with the people the same happiness. – Kahlil Gibran

Truth is like the stars; it does not appear except from behind obscurity of the night. Truth is like all beautiful things in the world; it does not disclose its desirability except to those who first feel the influence of falsehood. Truth is a deep kindness that teaches us to be content in our everyday life and share with the people the same happiness. – Kahlil Gibran

Unless the exchange be in love and kindly justice, it will but lead some to greed and others to hunger. – Kahlil Gibran

Vague and nebulous is the beginning of all things, but not their end. – Kahlil Gibran

Vain are the beliefs and teachings that make man miserable, and false is the goodness that leads him into sorrow and despair, for it is man’s purpose to be happy on this earth and lead the way to felicity and preach its gospel wherever he goes. He who does not see the kingdom of heaven in this life will never see it in the coming life. We came not into this life by exile, but we came as innocent creatures of God, to learn how to worship the holy and eternal spirit and seek the hidden secrets within ourselves from the beauty of life. – Kahlil Gibran

Verily all things move within your being in constant half embrace, the desired and the dreaded, the repugnant and the cherished, the pursued and that which you would escape. – Kahlil Gibran

Verily the kindness that gazes upon itself in a mirror turns to stone, and a good deed that calls itself by tender names becomes the parent to a curse. – Kahlil Gibran

Verily the lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul, and then walks grinning in the funeral. – Kahlil Gibran

Virtue tested: “Have I not survived hunger and thirst, suffering, and mockery for the sake of the truth which heaven has awakened in my heart?” – Kahlil Gibran

Wailing and lamentation befit those who stand before the throne of life and depart without leaving in its hands a drop of the sweat of their brows or the blood of their hearts. – Kahlil Gibran

Wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving. – Kahlil Gibran

We are all like the bright moon, we still have our darker side. – Kahlil Gibran

We are all prisoners but some of us are in cells with windows and some without. – Kahlil Gibran

We are limited, not by our abilities, but by our vision. – Kahlil Gibran

We are the sons of Sorrow; we are the poets and the prophets and the musicians. – Kahlil Gibran

We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them. – Kahlil Gibran

We fear death, yet we long for slumber and beautiful dreams. – Kahlil Gibran

We live only to discover beauty. – Kahlil Gibran

We live only to discover beauty. All else is a form of waiting – Kahlil Gibran

We often sing lullabyes to our children that we ourselves may sleep. – Kahlil Gibran

We shall never understand one another until we reduce the language to seven words. – Kahlil Gibran

We stood up and bade each other farewell, but love and despair stood between us like two ghosts, one stretching his wings with his fingers over our throats, one weeping and the other laughing hideously. As I took Selma’s hand and put it to my lips, she came close to me and placed a kiss on my forehead, then dropped on the wooden bench. She shut her eyes and whispered softly, “Oh, Lord God, have mercy on me and mend my broken wings! – Kahlil Gibran

We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way, begin no day where we have ended another, and no sunrise finds us where left by sunset. Even while the earth sleeps we travel. We are the seeds of that tenacious plant, and it is in our ripeness and our fullness of heart that we are given to the wind to be scattered. – Kahlil Gibran

We were a silent, hidden thought in the folds of oblivion, and we have become a voice that causes the heavens to tremble. – Kahlil Gibran

We who love Him beheld Him with these our eyes which He made to see; and we touched Him with these our hands which He taught to reach forth. – Kahlil Gibran

What difference is there between us, save a restless dream that follows my soul but fears to come near you? – Kahlil Gibran

What do the nationalists say about killers punishing murderers and thieves sentencing looters? – Kahlil Gibran

What is fear of need but need itself? – Kahlil Gibran

What is this world that is hastening me toward I know not what, viewing me with contempt? – Kahlil Gibran

What of the old serpent who cannot shed his skin, and calls all others naked and shameless? – Kahlil Gibran

What the soul knows is often unknown to the man who has a soul. We are infinitely more than we think. – Kahlil Gibran

When a man’s hand touches the hand of a woman, they both touch the heart of eternity. – Kahlil Gibran

When God created Man, he gave him Music as a language different from all other languages. And early man sang his glory in the wilderness; and drew the hearts of kings and moved them from their thrones. – Kahlil Gibran

When God threw me, a pebble, into this wondrous lake, I disturbed its surface with countless circles. But when I reached the depths, I became very still. – Kahlil Gibran

When I planted my pain in the field of patience it bore fruit of happiness. – Kahlil Gibran

When life does not find a singer to sing her heart she produces a philosopher to speak her mind. – Kahlil Gibran

When life life does not find a singer to sing her heart, she produces a philosopher to speak her mind – Kahlil Gibran

When love beckons to you, follow him, Though his ways are hard and steep. – Kahlil Gibran

When love beckons to you, follow him, Though his ways are hard and steep. And when his wings enfold you yield to him, Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you. – Kahlil Gibran

When the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance. – Kahlil Gibran

When we oppose the hidden conscience, it does us hurt. When we betray it, it judges us. – Kahlil Gibran

When we turn to one another for counsel we reduce the number of our enemies. – Kahlil Gibran

When you are born, your work is placed in your heart. – Kahlil Gibran

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. – Kahlil Gibran

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight. – Kahlil Gibran

When you are sorrowful, look again. – Kahlil Gibran

When you feel Jealousy is a sign that Love should have each other – Kahlil Gibran

When you have grasped a problem clearly, face it with resolution, for that is the way of the strong. – Kahlil Gibran

When you have solved all the mysteries of life you long for death, for it is but another mystery of life. – Kahlil Gibran

When you kill a beast, say to him in your heart:
By the same power that slays you, I too am slain, and I too shall be consumed.
For the law that delivers you into my hand shall deliver me into a mightier hand.
Your blood and my blood is naught but the sap that feeds the tree of heaven. – Kahlil Gibran

When you long for blessings that you may not name, and when you grieve knowing not the cause, then indeed you are growing with all things that grow, and rising toward your greater self. – Kahlil Gibran

When you look closely people are so strange & so complicated that they’re actually beautiful. – Kahlil Gibran

When you love you should not say, “God is in my heart,” but rather, “I am in the heart of God. – Kahlil Gibran

When you love you should not think you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course. – Kahlil Gibran

When you part from your friend, you grieve not; For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain. – Kahlil Gibran

When you reach the end of what you should know, you will be at the beginning of what you should sense. – Kahlil Gibran

When you reach the heart of life you shall find beauty in all things, even in the eyes that are blind to beauty. – Kahlil Gibran

When you reach the heart of life you will find yourself not higher than the felon, and not lower than the prophet. – Kahlil Gibran

When you see a man led to prison say in your heart, “Mayhap he is escaping from a narrower prison.” And when you see a man drunken say in your heart, “Mayhap he sought escape from something still more unbeautiful.” – Kahlil Gibran

When you were a wandering desire in the mist, I too was there, a wandering desire. Then we sought one another, and out of our eagerness dreams were born. And dreams were time limitless, and dreams were space without measure. – Kahlil Gibran

When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music. Which of you would be a reed, dumb and silent, when all else sings together in unison? – Kahlil Gibran

When you work you fulfil a part of earth’s furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream was born. And in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life, And to love life through labour is to be intimate with life’s inmost secret. – Kahlil Gibran

When you work you fulfill a part of earth’s furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream was born, And what is it to work with love? It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth. It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house. It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit. It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit. Work is love made visible – Kahlil Gibran

When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the ‘nay’ in your own mind, nor do you withhold the ‘ay. And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart; For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed. When you part from your friend, you grieve not; For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain. – Kahlil Gibran

Where are you now, my beloved? Do you hear my weeping From beyond the ocean? Do you understand my need? Do you know the greatness of my patience? – Kahlil Gibran

Where can I find a man governed by reason instead of habits and urges? – Kahlil Gibran

Where is the justice of political power if it executes the murderer and jails the plunderer, and then itself marches upon neighboring lands, killing thousands and pillaging the very hills? – Kahlil Gibran

Which of you would be silent – when all else sings together in unison? – Kahlil Gibran

Who among you does not feel that his power to love is boundless? And yet who does not feel that very love, though boundless, encompassed within the center of his being, and moving not from love thought to love thought, nor from love deeds to other love deeds? – Kahlil Gibran

Who are you that men should rend their bosom and unveil their pride, that you may see their worth naked and their pride unabashed? See first that you yourself deserve to be a giver, and an instrument of giving. – Kahlil Gibran

Who can depart from his pain and aloneness without regret? Too many fragments of the spirit have I scattered in these streets, and too many are the children of my longing that walk naked among these hills, and I cannot withdraw from them without a burden and an ache. It is not a garment I cast off this day, bit a skin that I tear with my own hands… Yet I cannot tarry longer. – Kahlil Gibran

Who can separate his faith from his actions, or his belief from his occupations? – Kahlil Gibran

Whoever would be a teacher of men let him begin by teaching himself before teaching others; and let him teach by example before teaching by word. For he who teaches himself and rectifies his own ways is more deserving of respect and reverence than he who would teach others and rectify their ways. – Kahlil Gibran

Why dispute what we shall be, when we know not even what we are. – Kahlil Gibran

Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it becomes too proud to weep, too grave to laugh, and too selfish to seek other than itself. – Kahlil Gibran

Wisdom is not in words; Wisdom is meaning within words. – Kahlil Gibran

Wisdom stands at the turn in the road and calls upon us publicly, but we consider it false and despise its adherents. – Kahlil Gibran

Wit is often a mask. If you tear it you will find either genius irritated or cleverness juggling. – Kahlil Gibran

Women opened the windows of my eyes and the doors of my spirit. Had it not been for the woman-mother, the woman-sister, and the woman-friend, I would have been sleeping among those who seek the tranquility of the world with their snoring. – Kahlil Gibran

Words are timeless. You should utter them or write them with a knowledge of their timelessness. – Kahlil Gibran

Work is love made visible. – Kahlil Gibran

Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy. – Kahlil Gibran

Would that I could be the peacemaker in your soul, that I might turn the discord and the rivalry of your elements into oneness and melody. – Kahlil Gibran

Would that I were a dry well, and that the people tossed stones into me, for that would be easier than to be a spring of flowing water that the thirsty pass by, and from which they avoid drinking. – Kahlil Gibran

Yea, death and prison we mete out To small offenders of the laws, While honor, wealth, and full respect On greater pirates we bestow. To steal a flower we call mean. To rob a field is chivalry; Who kills the body he must die, Who kills the spirit he goes free. – Kahlil Gibran

Yes, there is Nirvana; it is in leading your sheep to a green pasture, and in putting your child to sleep, and in writing the last line of your poem – Kahlil Gibran

Yesterday is but today’s memory, and tomorrow is today’s dream. – Kahlil Gibran

Yesterday is but today’s memory, tomorrow is today’s dream. – Kahlil Gibran

Yesterday is ever jealous of…tomorrow. – Kahlil Gibran

Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love. – Kahlil Gibran

Yet has not Man wept at the sounds? And are not his tears eloquent understanding? – Kahlil Gibran

Yet the timeless in you is aware of life’s timelessness, And knows that yesterday is but today’s memory and tomorrow is today’s dream. And that that which sings and contemplates in you is still dwelling within the bounds of that first moment which scattered the stars into space. Who among you does not feel that his power to love is boundless? And yet who does not feel that very love, though boundless, encompassed within the centre of his being, and moving not from love thought to love thought, nor from love deeds to other love deeds? And is not time even as love is, undivided and paceless? – Kahlil Gibran

Yet you shall not deplore having known blindness, nor regret having been deaf. For in that day you shall know the hidden purposes in all things. And you shall bless darkness as you would bless light. – Kahlil Gibran

You are a flower crushed beneath the feet of the animal that is concealed in a human being. Take comfort, in that you are the flower crushed and not the foot that has crushed it. – Kahlil Gibran

You are blind and I am deaf and dumb, so let us touch hands and understand. – Kahlil Gibran

You are far, far greater than you know – and all is well. – Kahlil Gibran

You are good when you are fully awake in your speech, Yet you are not evil when you sleep while your tongue staggers without purpose. And even stumbling speech may strengthen a weak tongue. – Kahlil Gibran

You are good when you are one with yourself. Yet when you are not one with yourself you are not evil. For a divided house is not a den of thieves; it is only a divided house. And a ship without rudder may wander aimlessly among perilous isles yet sink not to the bottom. – Kahlil Gibran

You are good when you strive to give of yourself. Yet you are not evil when you seek gain for yourself. For when you strive for gain you are but a root that clings to the earth and sucks at her breast. Surely the fruit cannot say to the root, ‘Be like me, ripe and full and ever giving of your abundance.’ For to the fruit giving is a need as receiving is a need to the root. – Kahlil Gibran

You are good when you walk to your goal firmly and with bold steps. Yet you are not evil when you go thither limping. For those who limp go not backwards. But you who are strong and swift, see that you do not limp before the lame, deeming it kindness. – Kahlil Gibran

You are indeed charitable when you give, and while giving, turn your face away so that you may not see the shyness of the receiver. – Kahlil Gibran

You are not enclosed within your bodies, nor confined to houses or fields. That which is you dwells above the mountain and roves with the wind…. – Kahlil Gibran

You are persecuted and despised. It were better that a person should be the oppressed than that he should be the oppressor; and fitter that he should be a victim to the frailty of human instincts than that he should be powerful and crush the flowers of life and disfigure the beauties of feeling with his desire. – Kahlil Gibran

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. – Kahlil Gibran

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth./The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far. – Kahlil Gibran

You are your own forerunner, and the towers you have builded are but the foundation of your giant-self. And that self too shall be a foundation. – Kahlil Gibran

You cannot judge a man beyond your knowledge of him, and how small is your knowledge. – Kahlil Gibran

You cannot judge any man beyond your knowledge of him, and how small is your knowledge. – Kahlil Gibran

You cannot laugh and be unkind at the same time – Kahlil Gibran

You cannot lay remorse upon the innocent nor lift it from the heart of the guilty. Unbidden shall it call in the night, that men may wake and gaze upon themselves. – Kahlil Gibran

You drink wine that you may be intoxicated; and I drink that it may sober me from that other wine. – Kahlil Gibran

You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give. – Kahlil Gibran

You hate Jesus because someone from the North Country said He was the Son of God. But you hate one another because each of you deems himself too great to be the brother of the next man. – Kahlil Gibran

You have been told that, even like a chain, you are as weak as your weakest link. This is but half the truth. You are also as strong as your strongest link. To measure you by your smallest deed is to reckon the power of ocean by the frailty of its foam. To judge you by your failures is to cast blame upon the seasons for their inconstancy. – Kahlil Gibran

You have your ideology and I have mine. – Kahlil Gibran

You may chain my hands, you may shackle my feet; you may even throw me into a dark prison; but you shall not enslave my thinking, because it is free! – Kahlil Gibran

You may forget the one with whom you have laughed, but never the one with whom you have wept. – Kahlil Gibran

You may forget with whom you laughed, but you will never forget with whom you wept. – Kahlil Gibran

You may give them your love but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. – Kahlil Gibran

You may give them your love, but not your thoughts. For they have their own thoughts. – Kahlil Gibran

You may strive to be like them but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. – Kahlil Gibran

You often say, “I would give, but only to the deserving.” The trees in your orchard say not so, nor the flocks in your pasture. They give that they may live, for to withhold is to perish. – Kahlil Gibran

You pray in your distress and in your need; would that you might also pray in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance. – Kahlil Gibran

You progress not through what has been done, but reaching towards what has yet to be done. – Kahlil Gibran

You see but your shadow when you turn your back to the sun.- Kahlil Gibran

You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care, nor your nights without a want and a grief, but rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked and unbound. – Kahlil Gibran

You shall not dwell in tombs made by the dead for the living. – Kahlil Gibran

You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts. – Kahlil Gibran

You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts; And when you can no longer dwell in the solitude of your heart you live in your lips, and sound is a diversion and a pastime. And in much of your talking, thinking is half murdered. – Kahlil Gibran

You were born together, and together you shall be for evermore . . . but let there be spaces in your togetherness. And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. – Kahlil Gibran

You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore. You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days. Ay, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God. But let there be spaces in your togetherness, and let the winds of the heavens dance between you. – Kahlil Gibran

You who are strong and swift, see that you do not limp before the lame, deeming it kindness. – Kahlil Gibran

You work that you may keep peace with the earth and the soul of the earth. – Kahlil Gibran

You would know the secret of death. But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heath of life? The owl whose night-bound eyes are blind unto the day cannot unveil the mystery of light. If you would indeed behold the spirit of death, open your heart wide unto the body of life. For life and death are one, even as the river and sea are one. For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun? – Kahlil Gibran

You would measure time the measureless and the immeasurable. You would adjust your conduct and even direct the course of your spirit according to hours and seasons. Of time you would make a stream upon whose bank you would sit and watch its flowing. – Kahlil Gibran

You, the strong, have I loved, though the marks of your iron hoofs are yet upon my flesh. – Kahlil Gibran

Your body is the harp of the soul. – Kahlil Gibran

Your body is the harp of your soul and it is yours to bring forth sweet music from it or confused sounds. – Kahlil Gibran

Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. – Kahlil Gibran

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you.
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
Which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you,
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might that His arrows might go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable. – Kahlil Gibran

Your clothes conceal much of your beauty, yet they hide not the unbeautiful. – Kahlil Gibran

Your clothes conceal much of your beauty, yet they hide not the unbeautiful. And though you seek in garments the freedom of privacy, you may find in them a harness and a chain. Would that you could meet the sun and the wind with more of your body and less of your raiment. – Kahlil Gibran

Your confidence in the people, and your doubt about them, are closely related to your self-confidence and your self-doubt. – Kahlil Gibran

Your daily life is your temple and your religion. – Kahlil Gibran

Your daily life is your temple and your religion. When you enter into it take with you your all. – Kahlil Gibran

Your fear of death is but the trembling of the shepherd when he stands before the king whose hand is to be laid upon him in honour. – Kahlil Gibran

Your freedom when it loses its fetters becomes itself the fetter of a greater freedom. – Kahlil Gibran

Your friend is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving. – Kahlil Gibran

Your friend is your needs answered. – Kahlil Gibran

Your friend is your needs answered. He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving. And he is your board and your fireside. For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace. – Kahlil Gibran

Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and the nights. – Kahlil Gibran

Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and the nights. But your ears thirst for the sound of the heart’s knowledge. You would know in words that which you have always known in thought. You would touch with your fingers the naked body of the dreams. – Kahlil Gibran

Your house is your larger body. – Kahlil Gibran

Your house is your larger body. It grows in the sun and sleeps in the stillness of the night; and it is not dreamless. Does not your house dream, and dreaming, leave the city for grove or hilltop? – Kahlil Gibran

Your house shall be not an anchor but a mast It shall not be a glistening film that covers a wound, but an eyelid that guards the eye. – Kahlil Gibran

Your joy can fill you only as deeply as your sorrow has carved you. – Kahlil Gibran

---

On Joy and Sorrow

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?
And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

Some of you say, “Joy is greater thar sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.”
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come, and when one sits, alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.
Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.
When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall. –  Kahlil Gibran

---

Your life is an island separated from all other islands and continents. Regardless of how many boats you send to other shores or how many ships arrive upon your shores, you yourself are an island separated by its own pains, secluded in its happiness – Kahlil Gibran

Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens. – Kahlil Gibran

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. – Kahlil Gibran

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding… And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy – Kahlil Gibran

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain. – Kahlil Gibran

Your reason and your passion are the rudder and the sails of your seafaring soul, if either your sails or your rudder be broken, you can but toss and drift, or else be held at a standstill in mid-seas. For reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction. – Kahlil Gibran

Your reason and your passion are your rudder and sails of your seafaring soul, if either your sails or your rudder be broken, you can but toss and drift, or else be held at a standstill in mid-seas. For reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction. – Kahlil Gibran

Your saying ‘I do not understand you’ is praise beyond my worth, and an insult you do not deserve. – Kahlil Gibran

Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield, upon your reason and your judgment wage war against your passion and your appetite. – Kahlil Gibran

Your thought describes laws, courts, judges, punishments. Mine explains that when man makes a law, he either violates it or obeys it. If there is a basic law, we are all one before it. He who disdains the mean is himself mean. He who vaunts his scorn of the sinful vaunts his disdain of all humanity. – Kahlil Gibran

Youth is a beautiful dream, on whose brightness books shed a blinding dust. Will ever the day come when the wise link the joy of knowledge to youth’s dream? Will ever the day come when Nature becomes the teacher of man, humanity his book and life his school? Youth’s joyous purpose cannot be fulfilled until that day comes. Too slow is our march toward spiritual elevation, because we make so little use of youth’s ardor. – Kahlil Gibran

Zeal is a volcano, the peak of which the grass of indecisiveness does not grow. – Kahlil Gibran

Quotes from Wikiquote

• Vain are the beliefs and teachings that make man miserable, and false is the goodness that leads him into sorrow and despair, for it is man’s purpose to be happy on this earth and lead the way to felicity and preach its gospel wherever he goes. He who does not see the kingdom of heaven in this life will never see it in the coming life. We came not into this life by exile, but we came as innocent creatures of God, to learn how to worship the holy and eternal spirit and seek the hidden secrets within ourselves from the beauty of life. This is the truth which I have learned from the teachings of the Nazarene.
  • Khalil in Spirits Rebellious (1908) “Khalil The Heretic” Part 3

• Let us disperse from our aloofness and serve the weak who made us strong, and cleanse the country in which we live. Let us teach this miserable nation to smile and rejoice with heaven’s bounty and glory of life and freedom.
  • Khalil in Spirits Rebellious (1908) “Khalil The Heretic” Part 3

• I believe that you can say to Abraham Lincoln, the blessed, “Jesus of Nazareth touched your lips when you spoke, and guided your hand when you wrote; and I shall uphold all that you have said and all that you have written.”
  I believe that you can say to Emerson and Whitman and James, “In my veins runs the blood of the poets and wise men of old, and it is my desire to come to you and receive, but I shall not come with empty hands.”
  I believe that even as your fathers came to this land to produce riches, you were born here to produce riches by intelligence, by labor.
  I believe that it is in you to be good citizens.
  • “I Believe In You (To The Americans Of Lebanese Origin)” in This Man from Lebanon: A Study of Kahlil Gibran (1945) by Barbara Young, p. 136

• The creator gives no heed to the critic unless he becomes a barren inventor.
  • Spiritual Sayings of Kahlil Gibran (1962) as translated by Anthony R. Ferris

• My enemy said to me, “Love your enemy.” And I obeyed him and loved myself.
  • Spiritual Sayings of Kahlil Gibran

• Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing toward what will be.
  • A Handful of Sand on the Shore, as quoted in Alterquest: the Alternative Quest for Answers (2006) by Karen Fiala, p. 127

• The tears that you spill, the sorrowful, are sweeter than the laughter of snobs and the guffaws of scoffers.
  • A Handful of Sand on the Shore

• To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but what he aspires to.
  • As quoted in Become a Conscious Creator: A Return to Self-Empowerment (2007) by Lisa Ford, p. 44

The Madman

• For the first time the sun kissed my own naked face and my soul was inflamed with love for the sun, and I wanted my masks no more. And as if in a trance I cried, “Blessed, blessed are the thieves who stole my masks.”
  Thus I became a madman.
  And I have found both freedom and safety in my madness; the freedom of loneliness and the safety from being understood, for those who understand us enslave something in us.
  But let me not be too proud of my safety. Even a Thief in a jail is safe from another thief.
  • Introduction

• My friend, I am not what I seem. Seeming is but a garment I wear — a care-woven garment that protects me from thy questionings and thee from my negligence.
  The “I” in me, my friend, dwells in the house of silence, and therein it shall remain for ever more, unperceived, unapproachable.
  I would not have thee believe in what I say nor trust in what I do — for my words are naught but thy own thoughts in sound and my deeds thy own hopes in action.
  • My Friend

• I know faces, because I look through the fabric my own eye weaves, and behold the reality beneath.
  • Faces

• I go — as others already crucified have gone. And think not we are weary of crucifixion. For we must be crucified by larger and yet larger men, between greater earths and greater heavens.
  • Crucified

• Once there ruled in the distant city of Wirani a king who was both mighty and wise. And he was feared for his might and loved for his wisdom. Now, in the heart of that city was a well, whose water was cool and crystalline, from which all the inhabitants drank, even the king and his courtiers; for there was no other well. One night when all were asleep, a witch entered the city, and poured seven drops of strange liquid into the well, and said, “From this hour he who drinks this water shall become mad.” Next morning all the inhabitants, save the king and his lord chamberlain, drank from the well and became mad, even as the witch had foretold. And during that day the people in the narrow streets and in the market places did naught but whisper to one another, “The king is mad. Our king and his lord chamberlain have lost their reason. Surely we cannot be ruled by a mad king. We must dethrone him.” That evening the king ordered a golden goblet to be filled from the well. And when it was brought to him he drank deeply, and gave it to his lord chamberlain to drink. And there was great rejoicing in that distant city of Wirani, because its king and its lord chamberlain had regained their reason.

The Forerunner

• You are your own forerunner, and the towers you have builded are but the foundation of your giant-self. And that self too shall be a foundation.
  And I too am my own forerunner, for the long shadow stretching before me at sunrise shall gather under my feet at the noon hour. Yet another sunrise shall lay another shadow before me, and that also shall be gathered at another noon.
  Always have we been our own forerunners, and always shall we be. And all that we have gathered and shall gather shall be but seeds for fields yet unploughed. We are the fields and the ploughmen, the gatherers and the gathered.

• O love, whose lordly hand
  Has bridled my desires,
  And raised my hunger and my thirst
  To dignity and pride,
  Let not the strong in me and the constant
  Eat the bread or drink the wine
  That tempt my weaker self.
  Let me rather starve,
  And let my heart parch with thirst,
  And let me die and perish,
  Ere I stretch my hand
  To a cup you did not fill,
  Or a bowl you did not bless.
  • “Love”

The Prophet

• Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself. Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; For love is sufficient unto love.

• Say not, “I have found the path of the soul.” Say rather, “I have found the soul walking upon my path.” For the soul walks upon all paths. The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed. The soul unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals.

• Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.
• Love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.
• For in truth it is life that gives unto life-while you, who deem yourself a giver, are but a witness.

Sand and Foam

• Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it so that the other half may reach you.
  • This line was later paraphrased by John Lennon, in his song “Julia”, on The Beatles (1968): “Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it just to reach you, Julia.”

• A sense of humour is a sense of proportion.

• My loneliness was born when men praised my talkative faults and blamed my silent virtues.

• When Life does not find a singer to sing her heart she produces a philosopher to speak her mind.

• A truth is to be known always, to be uttered sometimes.

• Strange that creatures without backbones have the hardest shells.

• Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity.

• There must be something strangely sacred about salt. It is in our tears and in the sea

• I would be the least among men with dreams and the desire to fulfill them, rather than the greatest with no dreams and no desires.

Jesus, The Son of Man

• “My face and your faces shall not be masked; our hand shall hold neither sword nor sceptre, and our subjects shall love us in peace and shall not be in fear of us.”
  Thus spoke Jesus, and unto all the kingdoms of the earth I was blinded, and unto all the cities of walls and towers; and it was in my heart to follow the Master to His kingdom.
  • James The Son Of Zebedee: On The Kingdoms Of The World

• I was dead. I was a woman who had divorced her soul. I was living apart from this self which you now see. I belonged to all men, and to none. They called me harlot, and a woman possessed of seven devils. I was cursed, and I was envied.
  But when His dawn-eyes looked into my eyes all the stars of my night faded away, and I became Miriam, only Miriam, a woman lost to the earth she had known, and finding herself in new places.
  • Mary Magdalen: On Meeting Jesus For The First Time

• He stood up and looked at me even as the seasons might look down upon the field, and He smiled. And He said again: “All men love you for themselves. I love you for yourself.”
  And then He walked away.
  But no other man ever walked the way He walked. Was it a breath born in my garden that moved to the east? Or was it a storm that would shake all things to their foundations?
  I knew not, but on that day the sunset of His eyes slew the dragon in me, and I became a woman, I became Miriam, Miriam of Mijdel.
  • Mary Magdalen: On Meeting Jesus For The First Time

• He knew the depth of beauty, He was for ever surprised by its peace and its majesty; and He stood before the earth as the first man had stood before the first day.
  We whose senses have been dulled, we gaze in full daylight and yet we do not see. We would cup our ears, but we do not hear; and stretch forth our hands, but we do not touch. And though all the incense of Arabia is burned, we go our way and do not smell.
  • A Philosopher: On Wonder And Beauty

• In truth we gaze but do not see, and hearken but do not hear; we eat and drink but do not taste. And there lies the difference between Jesus of Nazareth and ourselves.
  His senses were all continually made new, and the world to Him was always a new world.
  • A Philosopher: On Wonder And Beauty

• Many are the fools who say that Jesus stood in His own path and opposed Himself; that He knew not His own mind, and in the absence of that knowledge confounded Himself.
  Many indeed are the owls who know no song unlike their own hooting.
  You and I know the jugglers of words who would honor only a greater juggler, men who carry their heads in baskets to the market-place and sell them to the first bidder.
  We know the pygmies who abuse the sky-man. And we know what the weed would say of the oak tree and the cedar.
  I pity them that they cannot rise to the heights.
  • Nicodemus The Poet, The Youngest Of The Elders In The Sanhedrim: On Fools And Jugglers

• There are the men who say, “He preached tenderness and kindliness and filial love, yet He would not heed His mother and His brothers when they sought Him in the streets of Jerusalem.”
  They do not know that His mother and brothers in their loving fear would have had Him return to the bench of the carpenter, whereas He was opening our eyes to the dawn of a new day.
  His mother and His brothers would have had Him live in the shadow of death, but He Himself was challenging death upon yonder hill that He might live in our sleepless memory.
  • Nicodemus The Poet, The Youngest Of The Elders In The Sanhedrim: On Fools And Jugglers

• Do you not remember me, Nicodemus, who believed in naught but the laws and decrees and was in continual subjection to observances?
  And behold me now, a man who walks with life and laughs with the sun from the first moment it smiles upon the mountain until it yields itself to bed behind the hills.
  • Nicodemus The Poet, The Youngest Of The Elders In The Sanhedrim: On Fools And Jugglers

• Am I less man because I believe in a greater man?
  The barriers of flesh and bone fell down when the Poet of Galilee spoke to me; and I was held by a spirit, and was lifted to the heights, and in midair my wings gathered the song of passion.
  And when I dismounted from the wind and in the Sanhedrim my pinions were shorn, even then my ribs, my featherless wings, kept and guarded the song. And all the poverties of the lowlands cannot rob me of my treasure.
  I have said enough. Let the deaf bury the humming of life in their dead ears. I am content with the sound of His lyre, which He held and struck while the hands of His body were nailed and bleeding.
  • Nicodemus The Poet, The Youngest Of The Elders In The Sanhedrim: On Fools And Jugglers

• He was gentle, like a man mindful of his own strength.
  In my dreams I beheld the kings of the earth standing in awe in His presence.
  • Mary Magdalen: His Mouth Was Like the Heart of a Pomegranate

• I admired Him as a man rather than as a leader. He preached something beyond my liking, perhaps beyond my reason. And I would have no man preach to me.
  I was taken by His voice and His gestures, not by the substance of His speech. He charmed me but never convinced me; for He was too vague, too distant and obscure to reach my mind.
  I have known other men like Him. They are never constant nor are they consistent. It is with eloquence not with principles that they hold your ear and your passing thought, but never the core of your heart.
  • Manasseh: On the Speech and Gesture of Jesus

• In every aspect of the day Jesus was aware of the Father. He beheld Him in the clouds and in the shadows of the clouds that pass over the earth. He saw the Father’s face reflected in the quiet pools, and the faint print of His feet upon the sand; and He often closed His eyes to gaze into the Holy Eyes.
  The night spoke to Him with the voice of the Father, and in solitude He heard the angel of the Lord calling to Him. And when He stilled Himself to sleep He heard the whispering of the heavens in His dreams.
  He was often happy with us, and He would call us brothers.
  Behold, He who was the first Word called us brothers, though we were but syllables uttered yesterday.
  • John The Beloved Disciple In His Old Age: On Jesus The Word

• You ask why I call Him the first Word.
  Listen, and I will answer:
  In the beginning God moved in space, and out of His measureless stirring the earth was born and the seasons thereof.
  Then God moved again, and life streamed forth, and the longing of life sought the height and the depth and would have more of itself.
  Then God spoke thus, and His words were man, and man was a spirit begotten by God’s Spirit.
  And when God spoke thus, the Christ was His first Word and that Word was perfect; and when Jesus of Nazareth came to the world the first Word was uttered unto us and the sound was made flesh and blood.
  • John The Beloved Disciple In His Old Age: On Jesus The Word

• We are all sons and daughters of the Most High, but the Anointed One was His first-born, who dwelt in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, and He walked among us and we beheld Him.
  All this I say that you may understand not only in the mind but rather in the spirit. The mind weighs and measures but it is the spirit that reaches the heart of life and embraces the secret; and the seed of the spirit is deathless.
  The wind may blow and then cease, and the sea shall swell and then weary, but the heart of life is a sphere quiet and serene, and the star that shines therein is fixed for evermore.
  • John The Beloved Disciple In His Old Age: On Jesus The Word

• I have pondered long, and I know now that only the pure of heart forgive the thirst that leads to dead waters.
  And only the sure of foot can give a hand to him who stumbles.
  • Andrew: On Prostitutes

• Jesus loved me and I knew not why.
  And I loved Him because He quickened my spirit to heights beyond my stature, and to depths beyond my sounding.
  Love is a sacred mystery.
  To those who love, it remains forever wordless;
  But to those who do not love, it may be but a heartless jest.
  • John At Patmos: Jesus The Gracious

• Love is a gracious host to his guests though to the unbidden his house is a mirage and a mockery.
  Now you would have me explain the miracles of Jesus.
  We are all the miraculous gesture of the moment; our Lord and Master was the centre of that moment.
  Yet it was not in His desire that His gestures be known.
  • John At Patmos: Jesus The Gracious

• I would tell you more of Him, but how shall I?
  When love becomes vast love becomes wordless.
  And when memory is overladen it seeks the silent deep.
  • John At Patmos: Jesus The Gracious

• I too died. But in the depth of my oblivion I heard Him speak and say, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
  And His voice sought my drowned spirit and I was brought back to the shore.
  And I opened my eyes and I saw His white body hanging against the cloud, and His words that I had heard took the shape within me and became a new man. And I sorrowed no more.
  Who would sorrow for a sea that is unveiling its face, or for a mountain that laughs in the sun?
  Was it ever in the heart of man, when that heart was pierced, to say such words?
  What other judge of men has released His judges? And did ever love challenge hate with power more certain of itself?
  Was ever such a trumpet heard ‘twixt heaven and earth?
  Was it known before that the murdered had compassion on his murderers? Or that the meteor stayed his footsteps for the mole?
  The seasons shall tire and the years grow old, ere they exhaust these words: “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
  • Philip: And When He Died All Mankind Died

• In a dream I saw Jesus and My God Pan sitting together in the heart of the forest.
  They laughed at each other’s speech, with the brook that ran near them, and the laughter of Jesus was the merrier. And they conversed long.
  • Sarkis an old Greek Shepherd, called the madman: Jesus and Pan

• “And now let us play our reeds together.”
  And they played together.
  And their music smote heaven and earth, and a terror struck all living things.
  I heard the bellow of beasts and the hunger of the forest. And I heard the cry of lonely men, and the plaint of those who long for what they know not.
  I heard the sighing of the maiden for her lover, and the panting of the luckless hunter for his prey.
  And then there came peace into their music, and the heavens and the earth sang together.
  All this I saw in my dream, and all this I heard.
  • Sarkis an old Greek Shepherd, called the madman: Jesus and Pan

• Once again I say that with death Jesus conquered death, and rose from the grave a spirit and a power. And He walked in our solitude and visited the gardens of our passion.
  He lies not there in that cleft rock behind the stone.
  We who love Him beheld Him with these our eyes which He made to see; and we touched Him with these our hands which He taught to reach forth.
  • Mary Magdalen (Thirty years later): On the Resurrection of the Spirit

• You hate Jesus because someone from the North Country said He was the Son of God. But you hate one another because each of you deems himself too great to be the brother of the next man.
  • Mary Magdalen (Thirty years later): On the Resurrection of the Spirit

• You know not that the earth was given in marriage to the sun, and that earth it is who sends us forth to the mountain and the desert.
  There is a gulf that yawns between those who love Him and those who hate Him, between those who believe and those who do not believe.
  But when the years have bridged that gulf you shall know that He who lived in us is deathless, that He was the Son of God even as we are the children of God; that He was born of a virgin even as we are born of the husbandless earth.
  • Mary Magdalen (Thirty years later): On the Resurrection of the Spirit

• Master, master singer,
  Master of words unspoken,
  Seven times was I born, and seven times have I died
  Since your last hasty visit and our brief welcome.
  And behold I live again,
  Remembering a day and a night among the hills,
  When your tide lifted us up.
  • A Man From Lebanon: Nineteen Centuries Afterward

• Men would bless you or curse you;
  The curse, a protest against failure,
  The blessing, a hymn of the hunter
  Who comes back from the hills
  With provision for his mate.
  • A Man From Lebanon: Nineteen Centuries Afterward

• Master, Master Poet,
  Master of words sung and spoken,
  They have builded temples to house your name,
  And upon every height they have raised your cross,
  A sign and a symbol to guide their wayward feet,
  But not unto your joy.
  Your joy is a hill beyond their vision,
  And it does not comfort them.
  They would honour the man unknown to them.
  And what consolation is there in a man like themselves, a man whose
  kindliness is like their own kindliness,
  A god whose love is like their own love,
  And whose mercy is in their own mercy?
  They honour not the man, the living man,
  The first man who opened His eyes and gazed at the sun
  With eyelids unquivering.
  Nay, they do not know Him, and they would not be like Him.
  • A Man From Lebanon: Nineteen Centuries Afterward

• You laughed for the marrow in their bones that was not yet ready for laughter;
  And you wept for their eyes that yet were dry.
  Your voice fathered their thoughts and their understanding.
  Your voice mothered their words and their breath.
  • A Man From Lebanon: Nineteen Centuries Afterward

• Here and there, betwixt the cradle and the coffin, I meet your silent brothers,
  The free men, unshackled,
  Sons of your mother earth and space.
  They are like the birds of the sky,
  And like the lilies of the field.
  They live your life and think your thoughts,
  And they echo your song.
  But they are empty-handed,
  And they are not crucified with the great crucifixion,
  And therein is their pain.
  The world crucifies them every day,
  But only in little ways.
  The sky is not shaken,
  And the earth travails not with her dead.
  • A Man From Lebanon: Nineteen Centuries Afterward

• Master, Master Poet,
  Master of our silent desires,
  The heart of the world quivers with the throbbing of your heart,
  But it burns not with your song.
  The world sits listening to your voice in tranquil delight,
  But it rises not from its seat
  To scale the ridges of your hills.
  Man would dream your dream but he would not wake to your dawn
  Which is his greater dream.
  He would see with your vision,
  But he would not drag his heavy feet to your throne.
  Yet many have been enthroned in your name
  And mitred with your power,
  And have turned your golden visit
  Into crowns for their head and sceptres for their hand.
  • A Man From Lebanon: Nineteen Centuries Afterward

• Master, Master of Light,
  Whose eye dwells in the seeking fingers of the blind,
  You are still despised and mocked,
  A man too weak and infirm to be God,
  A God too much man to call forth adoration.
  • A Man From Lebanon: Nineteen Centuries Afterward

• But Master, Sky-heart, Knight of our fairer dream,
  You do still tread this day;
  Nor bows nor spears shall stay your steps.
  You walk through all our arrows.
  • A Man From Lebanon: Nineteen Centuries Afterward

• Poet, Singer, Great Heart,
  May our God bless your name,
  And the womb that held you, and the breasts that gave you milk.
  And may God forgive us all.
  • A Man From Lebanon: Nineteen Centuries Afterward

The Vision: Reflections on the Way of the Soul

• I have existed from all eternity and, behold, I am here; and I shall exist till the end of time, for my being has no end.
  I soared into limitless space and took wing in the imaginal world, approaching the circle of exalted light; and here I am now, mired in matter.
  I listened to the teachings of Confucius, imbibed the wisdom of Brahma, and sat beside Buddha beneath the tree of insight. And now I am here, wrestling with ignorance and unbelief. I was on Sinai when Yahweh shed his effulgence on Moses; at the River Jordan I witnessed the miracles of the Nazarene; and in Medina I heard the words of the Messenger to the Arabs. And here I am now, a captive of confusion.
  • The Anthem of Humanity

• Life without Liberty is like a body without spirit. Liberty without thought is like a disturbed spirit … Life, liberty, and thought — three persons in one substance, eternal, never-ending, and unceasing.
  • The Vision

• Love and what generates it. Rebellion and what creates it. Liberty and what nourishes it. Three manifestations of God. And God is the conscience of the rational world.
  • The Vision

• How amazing time is, and how amazing we are. Time has been transformed, and we have changed; it has advanced and set us in motion; it has unveiled its face, inspiring us with bewilderment and exhilaration.
  Yesterday we complained of time and feared it, but today we love and embrace it. Indeed, we have begun to perceive its purposes and characteristics, and to comprehend its secrets and enigmas.
  • Children of Gods, Scions of Apes

• Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love.
  • Children of Gods, Scions of Apes

• All that you see was and is for your sake. The numerous books, uncanny markings, and beautiful thoughts are the ghosts of souls who preceded you. The speech they weave is a link between you and your human siblings. The consequences that cause sorrow and rapture are the seeds that the past has sown in the field of the soul, and by which the future shall profit.

• My Soul gave me good counsel, teaching me to love what the people abhor and to show good will toward the one they hate. It showed me that Love is a property not of the lover but of the beloved. Before my Soul taught me, Love was for me a delicate thread stretched between two adjacent pegs, but now it has been transformed into a halo; its first is its last, and its last is its first. It encompasses every being, slowly expanding to embrace all that ever will be.

• My yearning is my cup, my burning thirst is my drink, and my solitude is my intoxication; I do not and shall not quench my thirst. But in this burning that is never extinguished is a joy that never wanes.
• My Soul gave me good counsel, teaching me to touch what has never taken corporeal form or crystallized. It made me understand that touching something is half the task of comprehending it, and that what we grasp therein is part of what we desire from it.
• My Soul gave me good counsel, teaching me not to measure time by saying, “It was yesterday, and will be tomorrow.” Before my Soul taught me, I imagined the past as an era not to be met with, and the future as an age that I would never witness. But now I know that in the brief moment of the present, all time exists, including everything that is in time — all that is eagerly anticipated, achieved, or realized.
  My Soul gave me good counsel, teaching me not to define a place by saying ‘here’ or ‘there’. Before my Soul taught me, I thought that when I was in any place on the earth I was remote from every other spot. But now I have learned that the place where I subsist is all places, and the space I occupy is all intervals.
• My Soul gave me good counsel, teaching me never to delight in praise or to be distressed by reproach. Before my Soul taught me, I doubted the value of my accomplishments until the passing days sent someone who would extol or disparage them. But now I know that trees blossom in the spring and give their fruits in the summer without any desire for accolades. And they scatter their leaves abroad in the fall and denude themselves in the winter without fear of reproof.

• My Soul gave me good counsel, teaching me and demonstrating to me that I am not exalted over the panhandler nor less than the mighty. Before my Soul taught me, I thought people consisted of two types: the weak, whom I pitied and disregarded, and the powerful, whom I followed or against I rebelled. Now, I have discovered that I was formed as one individual from the same substance from which all human beings were created. I am made up of the same elements as they are, and my pattern is theirs. My struggles are theirs, and my path is theirs.

• My Soul gave me good counsel, teaching me that the lamp which I carry does not belong to me, and the song that I sing was not generated from within me. Even if I walk with light, I am not the light; and if I am a taut-stringed lute, I am not the lute player.

Your Thought and Mine

• My thought is a tender leaf that sways in every direction and finds pleasure in its swaying. Your thought is an ancient dogma that cannot change you nor can you change it. My thought is new, and it tests me and I test it morn and eve.
  You have your thought and I have mine.
• Your thought advocates fame and show. Mine counsels me and implores me to cast aside notoriety and treat it like a grain of sand cast upon the shore of eternity. Your thought instills in your heart arrogance and superiority. Mine plants within me love for peace and the desire for independence. Your thought begets dreams of palaces with furniture of sandalwood studded with jewels, and beds made of twisted silk threads. My thought speaks softly in my ears, “Be clean in body and spirit even if you have nowhere to lay your head.” Your thought makes you aspire to titles and offices. Mine exhorts me to humble service.

• Your thought describes laws, courts, judges, punishments. Mine explains that when man makes a law, he either violates it or obeys it. If there is a basic law, we are all one before it. He who disdains the mean is himself mean. He who vaunts his scorn of the sinful vaunts his disdain of all humanity.

• Your thought advocates Judaism, Brahmanism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam. In my thought there is only one universal religion, whose varied paths are but the fingers of the loving hand of the Supreme Being. In your thought there are the rich, the poor, and the beggared. My thought holds that there are no riches but life; that we are all beggars, and no benefactor exists save life herself.

• Your thought sees power in armies, cannons, battleships, submarines, aeroplanes, and poison gas. But mine asserts that power lies in reason, resolution, and truth. No matter how long the tyrant endures, he will be the loser at the end. Your thought differentiates between pragmatist and idealist, between the part and the whole, between the mystic and materialist. Mine realizes that life is one and its weights, measures and tables do not coincide with your weights, measures and tables. He whom you suppose an idealist may be a practical man

Kahlil Gibran’s Poems

Beauty

And a poet said, Speak to us of Beauty.
And he answered:

Where shall you seek beauty, and how
shall you find her unless she herself be your way and your guide?
And how shall you speak of her except she be the weaver of your speech?

The aggrieved and the injured say, “Beauty is kind and gentle.
Like a young mother half-shy of her own glory she walks among us.”
And the passionate say, “Nay, beauty is a thing of might and dread.
Like the tempest she shakes the earth beneath us and the sky above us.”

The tired and the weary say, “beauty is of soft whisperings. She speaks in our spirit.
Her voice yields to our silences like a faint light that quivers in fear of the shadow.”
But the restless say, “We have heard her shouting among the mountains,
And with her cries came the sound of hoofs, and the beating of wings and the roaring of lions.”

At night the watchmen of the city say,
“Beauty shall rise with the dawn from the east.”
And at noontide the toilers and the wayfarers say,
“we have seen her leaning over the earth from the windows of the sunset.”

In winter say the snow-bound,
“She shall come with the spring leaping upon the hills.”
And in the summer heat the reapers say,
“We have seen her dancing with the autumn leaves, and we saw a drift of snow in her hair.”

All these things have you said of beauty.
Yet in truth you spoke not of her but of needs unsatisfied,
And beauty is not a need but an ecstasy.
It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth,
But rather a heart enflamed and a soul enchanted.
It is not the image you would see nor the song you would hear,
But rather an image you see though you close your eyes
and a song you hear though you shut your ears.
It is not the sap within the furrowed bark, nor a wing attached to a claw,
But rather a garden for ever in bloom and a flock of angels for ever in flight.

People of Orphalese, beauty is life when life unveils her holy face.
But you are life and you are the veil.
Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.
But you are eternity and your are the mirror.

An excerpt from “The Prophet”

Children

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said,
“Speak to us of Children”.
And he said:

Your children are not your children,
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but are not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and
He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
So he loves also the bow that is stable.

An excerpt from “The Prophet”

Freedom

And an orator said, Speak to us of Freedom ;
And he answered saying:

At the city gate and by your fireside I have seen you
prostrate yourself and worship your own freedom,
Even as slaves humble themselves before a tyrant
and praise him though he slays them.

Ay, in the grove of the temple and in the shadow of
the citadel I have seen the freest among you wear
their freedom as a yoke and a handcuff.

And my heart bled within me; for you can only be
free when even the desire of seeking freedom
becomes a harness to you, and when you cease to
speak of freedom as a goal and a fulfilment.

You shall be free indeed when your days are not
without a care nor your nights without a want and a
grief,
But rather when these things girdle your life and yet
you rise above them naked and unbound.

And how shall you rise beyond your days and
nights unless you break the chains which you at the
dawn of your understanding have fastened around
your noon hour?

In truth that which you call freedom is the strongest
of these chains, though its links glitter in the sun
and dazzle your eyes.
And what is it but fragments of your own self you
would discard that you may become free?

If it is an unjust law you would abolish, that law was
written with your own hand upon your own
forehead.
You cannot erase it by burning your law books nor
by washing the foreheads of your judges, though
you pour the sea upon them.

And if it is a despot you would dethrone, see first
that his throne erected within you is destroyed.
For how can a tyrant rule the free and the proud
but for a tyranny in their own freedom and a shame
in their own pride?

And if it is a care you would cast off, that care has
been chosen by you rather than imposed upon you.
And if it is a fear you would dispel, the seat of that
fear is in your heart and not in the hand of the feared.

Verily all things move within your being in constant
half embrace, the desired and the dreaded, the
repugnant and the cherished, the pursued and that
which you would escape.

These things move within you as lights and
shadows in pairs that cling.
And when the shadow fades and is no more, the
light that lingers becomes a shadow to another light.
And thus your freedom when it loses its fetters
becomes itself the fetter of a greater freedom.

An excerpt from “The Prophet”

Friendship

And a youth said, Speak to us of Friendship.
And he answered, saying:

Your friend is your needs answered.
He is your field which you sow with love
and reap with thanksgiving.
And he is your board and your fireside.
For you come to him with your hunger,
And you seek him for peace.

When your friend speaks his mind you fear
the “nay” in your own mind,
nor do you withhold the “ay.”
And when he is silent your heart ceases
not to listen to his heart;
For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires,
all expectations are born and shared,
with joy that is unacclaimed.
When you part from your friend, you grieve not;
For that which you love most in him
may be clearer in his absence,
as the mountain to the climber
is clearer from the plain.

And let there be no purpose in friendship
save the deepening of the spirit.
For love that seeks aught but the disclosure
of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth;
and only the unprofitable is caught.

And let your best be for your friend.
If he must know the ebb the of your tide
Let him know its flood also, for what is your friend
that you should seek him with hours to kill?
Seek him always with hours to live.
For it is his to fill your need, but not your emptiness.
And in the sweetness of friendship
let there be laughter, an sharing of pleasures.
For in the dew of little things
the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.

An excerpt from “The Prophet”

Giving

Then said a rich man, “Speak to us of Giving.”
And he answered:

You give but little when you give of your possessions.
It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.

For what are your possessions but things
you keep and guard
for fear you may need them tomorrow?
And tomorrow, what shall tomorrow
bring to the over prudent dog
burying bones in the trackless sand as he follows the
pilgrims to the holy city?
And what is fear of need but need itself?
Is not dread of thirst when your well is full,
the thirst that is unquenchable?

There are those who give little
of the much which they have-
and they give it
for recognition and their hidden desire
makes their gifts unwholesome.
And there are those who have little and give it all.
These are the believers in life and the bounty of life,
and their coffer is never empty.
There are those who give with joy,
and their joy is their reward.
And there are those who give with pain,
and that pain is their baptism.
And there are those who give and know not
pain in giving, nor do they seek joy,
nor give with mindfulness of virtue:
They give as in yonder valley the myrtle
breathes its fragrance into space.
Through the hands of such as these God
speaks, and from behind their eyes
He smiles upon the earth.

It is well to give when asked, but it is
better to give unasked, through understanding:
And to the open-handed the search for
one who shall receive is joy greater than giving.
And is there aught your would withhold?
All you have shall some day be given:
Therefore give now, that the season of
giving may be yours and not your inheritors`.

You often say,”I would give, but only to the deserving.”
The trees in your orchard say not so,
nor the flocks in your pasture.
They give that they may live,
for to with-hold is to perish.
Surely he who is worthy to receive his
days and nights, is worthy of all else from you.
And he who has deserved to drink from
the ocean of life deserves to fill his cup from your little stream.
And what desert greater shall there be,
than that, which lies in the courage and the
confidence, nay the charity, of receiving?
And who are you that men should rend
their bosom and unveil their pride,
that you may see their worth naked and their pride unabashed?
See first that you yourself deserve to be
a giver,and an instrument of giving.

For in truth it is life that gives unto life-
while you, who deem yourself a giver are but a witness.

And you receivers- and you are all
receivers- assume no weight of gratitude,
lest you lay a yoke upon
yourself and upon he who gives.
Rather rise together with the giver on his gifts as on wings:
For to be overmindful of your debt,is
to doubt his generosity who has the
free-hearted earth for mother,and God for father

An excerpt from “The Prophet”

Crime and Punishment

Then one of the judges of the city stood forth and said,
“Speak to us of Crime and Punishment.”
And he answered saying:

It is when your spirit goes wandering upon the wind,
That you, alone and unguarded, commit a wrong unto others
and therefore unto yourself.
And for that wrong committed must you
knock and wait a while unheeded at the gate of the blessed.

Like the ocean is your god-self; It remains for ever undefiled.
And like the ether it lifts but the winged.
Even like the sun is your god-self;
It knows not the ways of the mole nor seeks it the holes of the serpent.
But your god-self does not dwell alone in your being.

Much in you is still man, and much in you is not yet man,
But a shapeless pigmy that walks asleep
in the mist searching for its own awakening.
And of the man in you would I now speak.
For it is he and not your god-self nor the pigmy in the mist,
that knows crime and the punishment of crime.

Oftentimes have I heard you speak of one who commits a wrong
as though he were not one of you,
but a stranger unto you and an intruder upon your world.
But I say that even as the holy and the righteous
cannot rise beyond the highest which is in each one of you,
So the wicked and the weak cannot fall lower
than the lowest which is in you also.
And as a single leaf turns not yellow but
with the silent knowledge of the whole tree,
So the wrong-doer cannot do wrong
without the hidden will of you all.

Like a procession you walk together towards your god-self.
You are the way and the wayfarers.
And when one of you falls down he falls for those behind him,
a caution against the stumbling stone.
Ay, and he falls for those ahead of him,
who though faster and surer of foot,
yet removed not the stumbling stone.

And this also, though the word lie heavy upon your hearts:
The murdered is not unaccountable for his own murder,
And the robbed is not blameless in being robbed.
The righteous is not innocent of the deeds of the wicked,
And the white-handed is not clean in the doings of the felon.
Yea, the guilty is oftentimes the victim of the injured,
And still more often the condemned is the burden-bearer
for the guiltless and unblamed.

You cannot separate the just from the unjust
and the good from the wicked;
For they stand together before the face of the sun
even as the black thread and the white are woven together.
And when the black thread breaks,
the weaver shall look into the whole cloth,
and he shall examine the loom also.

If any of you would bring judgment the unfaithful wife,
Let him also weight the heart of her husband in scales,
and measure his soul with measurements.
And let him who would lash the offender
look unto the spirit of the offended.
And if any of you would punish in the name of righteousness
and lay the ax unto the evil tree,
let him see to its roots;
And verily he will find the roots of the good and the bad,
the fruitful and the fruitless,
all entwined together in the silent heart of the earth.

And you judges who would be just,
What judgment pronounce you upon him who
though honest in the flesh yet is a thief in spirit?
What penalty lay you upon him who
slays in the flesh yet is himself slain in the spirit?
And how prosecute you him who in action is a deceiver and an oppressor,
Yet who also is aggrieved and outraged?
And how shall you punish those whose
remorse is already greater than their misdeeds?
Is not remorse the justice which is administered
by that very law which you would fain serve?
Yet you cannot lay remorse upon the innocent nor
lift it from the heart of the guilty.
Unbidden shall it call in the night,
that men may wake and gaze upon themselves.

And you who would understand justice, how shall you
unless you look upon all deeds in the fullness of light?
Only then shall you know that the erect and the fallen are but one man
standing in twilight between the night
of his pigmy-self and the day of his god-self,
And that the corner-stone of the temple is not higher
than the lowest stone in its foundation.

An excerpt from “The Prophet” 

Love

Then said Almitra, Speak to us of Love.
And he raised his head and looked upon the people,
and there fell a stillness upon them.
And with a great voice he said:

When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams
as the north wind lays waste the garden.

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you.
Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest
branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them
in their clinging to the earth.
Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant:
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire,
that you may become sacred bread for God`s sacred feast.

All these things shall love do unto you
that you may know the secrets of your heart,
and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life`s heart.

But if in your fear you would seek only
loves peace and loves pleasure,
Then it is better for you
that you cover your nakedness and
pass out of love`s threshing floor,
Into the seasonless world where you
shall laugh, but not all of your laughter,
and weep, but not all of your tears.

Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself,
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed:
For love is sufficient unto love.

When you love you should not say,
“God is in my heart,” but rather,
“I am in the heart of God.”
And think not you can direct the course
of love, for love, if it finds you worthy,
directs your course.

Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart
and give thanks for another day of loving:
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love`s ecstasy:
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in you heart
and a song of praise upon you lips.

An excerpt from “The Prophet”

Work

Then a ploughman said, Speak to us of Work.
And he answered, saying:

You work that you may keep pace with
the earth and the soul of the earth.
For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons,
and to step out of life’s procession, that marches in majesty
and proud submission towards the infinite.

When you work you are a flute through
whose heart the whispering of the hours
turns to music.
Which of you would be a reed, dumb and silent,
When all else sings together in unison?

Always you have been told that work is
a curse and labour a misfortune.
But I say to you that when you work you fulfil
a part of earth’s furthest dream, assigned to you
when the dream was born,
And in keeping yourself with labour you
are in truth loving life,
And to love life’s labour is to be intimate
with life’s innermost secret.

But if in your pain you would call birth an affliction
and the support of the flesh a curse
written upon your brow,
than I answer that naught but the sweat of your brow
shall wash away that which is written,

You have been told that life is darkness,
and in your weariness you echo what
was said by the weary.
And I say that life is indeed a darkness
save when there is urge.
And all urge is blind save when there is knowledge,
And all knowledge is vain save when there is work,
And all work is empty save when there is love;
And when you work with love you bind
yourself to yourself, and to one another,
and to God.

And what is it to work with love?
It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn
from your own heart,
even as if your beloved
were to wear that cloth.
It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved
were to dwell in that house.
It is to sow seeds with tenderness and
reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved
were to eat the fruit.
It is to charge all things you fashion
with a breath of your own spirit,
And to know that all the blessed dead
are standing about you and watching.

Often have I heard you say, as if speaking in sleep,
“He who works in marble, and finds the shape
of his own soul in the stone,
is nobler that he who ploughs the soil.
And he who seizes the rainbow to lay it on a
cloth in the likeness of man, is more
than he who makes the sandals for our feet.”
But I say, not in sleep but in the over- wakefulness of noontide,
that the wind speaks not more sweetly to the giant oaks
than to the least of all the blades of grass.
And he alone is great who turns the voice
of the wind into a song made sweeter by
his own loving.

Work is love made visible
And if you cannot work with love but only
with distaste, it is better that you should
leave your work and sit at the gate of the
temple and take alms of those who work with joy..
For if you bake bread with indifference
you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half
man’s hunger
And if you grudge the crushing of the
grapes, your grudge distills a poison in the wine
And if you sing though as angels, and
love not the singing, you muffle man’s ears
to the voices of the day and the voices of
the night.

An excerpt from “The Prophet”