Kahlil Gibran
156 quotes
Biography
Jubrān Khalīl Jubrān, usually referred to in English as Kahlil Gibran, was a Lebanese-American writer, poet and visual artist. He was also considered a philosopher, although he himself rejected the title.
"You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts."
"If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. If they don't, they never were."
"Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky, We fell them down and turn them into paper,That we may record our emptiness."
"Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Some of you say, “Joy is greater than 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."
"I AM IGNORANT of absolute truth. But I am humble before my ignorance and therein lies my honor and my reward."
"You give but little when you give of your possessions.It is when you give of yourself that you truly give."
"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"
"The Reality of The Other Person Lies Not In What He Reveals To You, But 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."
"Love one another, but make not a bond of love:Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls."
"Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.But you are eternity and you are the mirror."
"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."
"When you part from your friend, you grieve not;For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, asthe mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain."
"If you reveal your secrets to the wind,you should not blame the wind forrevealing them to the trees."
"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."
"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."
"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 the oceanby the frailty of its foam.To judge you by your failures is to cast blame upon the seasons for their inconstancy."
"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."
"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."
"One's own religion is after all a matter between oneself and one's Maker and no one else's."
"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."
"Your daily life is your temple and your religion."