Kahlil Gibran

“To measure you by your smallest deed is to reckon the ocean by the frailty of its foam.To judge you by your failures is to cast blame upon the seasons for their inconsistencies.”

“Qualities of Good Citizens... is to admire what others have created in love and faith”

“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.”

“You may forget with whom you laughed, but you will never forget with whom you wept.”

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

“Is not dread of thirst when your well is full, the thirst that is unquenchable?”

“je dormis et rêvai que la vie n'était que joie. je m'éveillai et vis que la vie était service. je servis et vis que le service était joie”

“La vostra gioia è il vostro dolore senza maschera,E il pozzo da cui scaturisce il vostro riso, è stato sovente colmo di lacrime.E come può essere altrimenti?Quanto più a fondo vi scava il dolore, tanta più gioia potrete contenere.”

“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.”

“و يلٌ لأمة تأكل مما لا تزرع ، و تلبـس مما لا تنسج ، إنها يومئذ أمة عقيمة ، لا صوت لها و لا رأي و لا وجود”

“You're reason and your passion are the rudder.. and the sails of your soul. If either be broken, you will drift or 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 it’s own destruction”

“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.”

“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.”

“Come, let us drink the last raindrop tears from a narcissus cup and fill our souls with the songs of larks.”

“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?”

“You need not fear, my love,for never have the stars on hightold what they know.”

“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.”

“Tolerance is love sick with the sickness of haughtiness.”

“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.”

“Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself. But if to 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 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 upon your lips.”

“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.”

“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”

“The optimist sees the rose and not its thorns; the pessimist stares at the thorns, oblivious to the rose.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but at what he aspires to.”

“Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.”

“Thus with my lips have I denounced you, while my heart, bleeding within me, called you tender names.”

“For God opens the doors of truth to him who knocks with the hand of faith”

“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.”

“Happiness is a vine that takes root and grows within the heart, never outside it.”

“Love is all I can possess and no one can deprive me of it.Kahlil Gibran (Visions of the Prophet)”

“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.”

“Remembrance is a form of meeting.”

“Your daily life is your temple and your religion. When you enter into it take with you your all.”

“I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers.”

“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!”

“Your children are not your children.They are 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 thir 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 make 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 also loves the bow that is stable.”

“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.”

“You are my brother and I love you. I love you worshipping in your church, kneeling in your temple, and praying in your mosque. You and I and all are children of one religion, for the varied paths of religion are but the fingers of the loving hand of the Supreme Being, extended to all, offering completeness of spirit to all, anxious to receive all.”

“I came here to be for all and with all,and what I do today in my solitudewill be echoed tomorrow by the multitude. What I say now with one heartwill be said tomorrow by thousands of hearts...”

“A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle.”

“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?”

“A man's true wealth is the good he does in the world.”

“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 fullfilment. you should be free indeed when your days are not without care nor your nights without a word and a grief, but rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked unbound.”

“When life does not find a singer to sing her heart she produces a philosopher to speak her mind.”

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

“Life without liberty is like a body without spirit.”

“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.”