Kahlil Gibran, 1883 - 1931
Born: 6 January 1883, Bsharri, Ottoman Syria (now Lebanon)
Died: 10 April 1931, New York City
Gibran Khalil Gibran bin Mikha'il bin Sa'ad was born in Christian Maronite community, his mother Kamila was the daughter of a Maronite priest. His father worked for an Ottoman administrator (read "warlord"), when the administrator was forced from power his staff was investigated and Gibran's father jailed on embezzlement charges. Although he was released in 1894, Kamila and her children moved to Boston the next year. Along with public school he enrolled in art classes, his drawings were published as early as 1898. To better understand his Lebanese roots he attended prep school at Beirut, returning in 1902. In 1908 he went to Paris and spent two years studying with Auguste Rodin. In 1912 he moved to New York and worked on both his painting and writing, predominantly in Arabic. Starting in 1918 with The Madman he wrote almost exclusively in English, in the Anglophone world he is best known for The Prophet (1923). In 1930 he developed cirrhosis of the liver, which he apparently compounded by drinking heavily to relieve the pain. His sister bought a monastery in his home village and buried Gibran there, the facility is now the Gibran Museum. His will gave his publishing royalties to his home village.
Note: Although a strict transliteration of his given name is Khalil, it was recorded as Kahlil when he entered school at Boston and he consistenly used that spelling in English.
Biography from Wikipedia and Authors' Calendar
Additional quotes from Wikiquote. Wikiquote entries are often "sourced" and may include items longer than those included here, particularly for poets, lyricists, and dramatists.
Kahlil Gibran quotes:
Quotes found : 147 — (15 per page, this is page 1 of 10) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next
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- 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?
- A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle.
- 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.
- A root is a flower that disdains fame.
- Advance, and never halt, for advancing is perfection. Advance and do not fear the thorns in the path, for they draw only corrupt blood.
- All our words are but crumbs that fall down from the feast of the mind.
- All that spirits desire, spirits attain.
- An exaggeration is a truth that has lost its temper.
- 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.
- 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, And to know that all the blessed dead are standing about you and watching.
- As one's gifts increase, his friends decrease.
- 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.
- 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.
- Coming generations will learn equality from poverty, and love from woes.
- Death most resembles a prophet who is without honor in his own land or a poet who is a stranger among his people.
Quotes found : 147 — (15 per page, this is page 1 of 10) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next
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