Kahlil Gibran

“Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing toward what will be.”

“He who has not looked on Sorrow will never see Joy”

“Every man loves two women;the one is the creation of his imagination and the other is not yet born”

“To follow Beauty even when she shall lead you to the verge of the precipice; and though she is winged and you are wingless, and though she shall pass beyond the verge, follow her, for where Beauty is not, there is nothing;”

“Manusia tidak akan dapat menuai cinta sampai dia merasakan perpisahan yang menyedihkan, dan yang mampu membuka pikirannya, merasakan kesabaran yang pahit dan kesulitan yang menyedihkan”

“Though his ways are hard and steep.”

“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.”

“Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,”

“If the Milky Way were not within me how should I have seen it or known it?”

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

“A great singer is he who sings our silences”

“Inspiration will always sing; inspiration will never explain. We often sing lullabies to our children that we ourselves may sleep. All our words are but crumbs that fall down from the feast of the mind.”

“A poet is a dethroned king sitting among the ashes of his palace trying to fashion an image out of the ashes.”

“If I were to choose between the power of writing a poem and the ecstasy of a poem unwritten, I would choose the ecstasy. It is better poetry.”

“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.”

“Here love begins to render the prose of Life into hymns and canticles of praise”

“But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love.”

“But the hunter was also the hunted,For many of my arrows left my bow only to seek my own breast...”

“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.”

“The silence of aloneness reveals to their eyes their naked selves and they would escape.”

“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.”

“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.”

“These are the believers in life and the bounty of life, and their coffer is never empty.”

“So the wicked and the weak cannot fall lower than the lowest which is in you also.”

“It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.”

“For the pillars of the temple stand apart,”

“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.”

“Chapter23On Prayer”

“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”

“Remembrance is a form of meeting.Forgetfulness is a form of freedom.”

“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.”

“Rest in reason. Move in Passion.”

“Who can depart from his pain, and his aloneness without regret??”

“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…For if you bake with indifference, you bake a bitter bread.”

“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.”

“And let to-day embrace the past with remembrance and the future with longing.”

“There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward.”

“Hidup ini surga. Pintunya ada di hati”

“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 anohter woman shall bear me.”

“Orang terkuat bukan mereka yang selalumenang..melainkan mereka yang tetap tegar ketika mereka jatuh..”

“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.”

“Imagination sees the complete reality, - it is where past, present and future meet... Imagination is limited neither to the reality which is apparent - nor to one place. It lives everywhere. It is at a centre and feels the vibrations of all the circles within which east and west are virtually included. Imagination is the life of mental freedom. It realizes what everything is in its many aspects ... Imagination does not uplift: we don't want to be uplifted, we want to be more completely aware.”

“But memory is an autumn leaf that murmurs a while in the wind and then is heard no more.”

“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.”

“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.”

“To be able to look back upon ones life in satisfaction, is to live twice”

“Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield, upon which your reason and your judgment wage war against your passion and your appetite.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.But how shall I, unless you yourselves be also the peacemakers, nay, the lovers of all your elements?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.Therefore let your soul exalt your reason to the height of passion, that it may sing;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.I would have you consider your judgment and your appetite even as you would two loved guests in your house.Surely you would not honour one guest above the other; for he who is more mindful of one loses the love and the faith of both.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."And since you are a breath in God's sphere, and a leaf in God's forest, you too should rest in reason and move in passion.”

“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.”

“He who seeks ecstasy in love should not complain of suffering.”

“Exaggeration is truth that has lost its temper.”