Khalil Gibran Quotes

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.

Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself

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 forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair

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. 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. 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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

Love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation

Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity.

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.

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.

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.

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

Trees are poems that the earth writes upon the sky.

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

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

The real test of good manners is to be able to put up with bad manners pleasantly.

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.

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

And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

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.

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

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 th 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.

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.

Much of your pain is self-chosen.

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

Work is love made visible. And if you can't 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 the people who work with joy

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

There is a space between man's imagination and man's attainment that may only be traversed by his longing.

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

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

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.

Darkness may hide the trees and the flowers from the eyes but it cannot hide love from the soul.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Tell your secret to the wind, but don't blame it for telling the trees.

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

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

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

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.

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

تقولين لي أنك تخافين الحب لماذا تخافينه يا صغيرتي ؟ أتخافين نور الشمس ؟ أتخافين مدّ البحر ؟ أتخافين طلوع الفجر ؟ أتخافين مجيء الربيع؟ لماذا يا ترى تخافين الحب ؟

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

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

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.

Do not love half lovers Do not entertain half friends Do not indulge in works of the half talented Do not live half a life and do not die a half death If you choose silence, then be silent When you speak, do so until you are finished Do not silence yourself to say something And do not speak to be silent If you accept, then express it bluntly Do not mask it If you refuse then be clear about it for an ambiguous refusal is but a weak acceptance Do not accept half a solution Do not believe half truths Do not dream half a dream Do not fantasize about half hopes Half a drink will not quench your thirst Half a meal will not satiate your hunger Half the way will get you no where Half an idea will bear you no results Your other half is not the one you love It is you in another time yet in the same space It is you when you are not Half a life is a life you didn't live, A word you have not said A smile you postponed A love you have not had A friendship you did not know To reach and not arrive Work and not work Attend only to be absent What makes you a stranger to them closest to you and they strangers to you The half is a mere moment of inability but you are able for you are not half a being You are a whole that exists to live a life not half a life

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

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

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.

Khalil Gibran said that parents are like a bow, And children like arrows. The more the bow bends and stretches, the farther the arrow flies. I fly, not because I am special, but because they stretched for me.

All that spirits desire, spirits attain.

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.

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.

You cannot laugh and be unkind at the same time

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.

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

The earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.

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

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.

True beauty is a ray That springs from the sacred depths of the soul, and illuminates the body, just as life springs from the kernel of a stone and gives colour and scent to a flower.

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

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

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

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

For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.

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

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

Love is quivering happiness.

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?

Let your home be you mast and not your anchor.

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

The lust for comfort kills the passions of the soul.

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

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

And in much of your talking, thinking is half murdered. For thought is a bird of space, that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly.

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.

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

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. 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. 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, is but a witness.

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

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.

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.

Pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.

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

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.

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.

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

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? Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing. And when you have reached the mountaintop,then you shall begin to climb. And when the earth shal claim your limbs,then shall you truly dance.

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 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. Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.

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. 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 tranquillity: 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.

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 will change all things.

So this is where all the vapid talk about the 'soul' of the universe is actually headed. Once the hard-won principles of reason and science have been discredited, the world will not pass into the hands of credulous herbivores who keep crystals by their sides and swoon over the poems of Khalil Gibran. The 'vacuum' will be invaded instead by determined fundamentalists of every stripe who already know the truth by means of revelation and who actually seek real and serious power in the here and now. One thinks of the painstaking, cloud-dispelling labor of British scientists from Isaac Newton to Joseph Priestley to Charles Darwin to Ernest Rutherford to Alan Turing and Francis Crick, much of it built upon the shoulders of Galileo and Copernicus, only to see it casually slandered by a moral and intellectual weakling from the usurping House of Hanover. An awful embarrassment awaits the British if they do not declare for a republic based on verifiable laws and principles, both political and scientific.