Khalil Gibran Quotes (311 Quotes)

Aye, and he falls for those ahead of him, who, though faster and surer of foot, yet removed not the stumbling stone.

Have you beauty, that leads the heart from things fashioned of wood and stone to the holy mountain?

The self same well from which your laughs rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.

You are the way and the wayfarers.

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

Build of your imaginings a bower in the wilderness ere you build a house within the city walls.

Have you remembrances, the glimmering arches that span the summits of the mind?

THEN said a rich man, Speak to us of Giving.

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 ocean by the frailty of its foam. To judge you by your failures is to cast blame upon the seasons for their inconstancy.

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

But let there be no scales to weigh your unknown treasure.

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.

Therefore let your soul exalt your reason to the height of passion, that it may sing;

You have walked among us a spirit, and your shadow has been a light upon our faces.

All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart.

Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.

If you would indeed behold the spirit of death, open your heart wide unto the body of life.

Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquillity:

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.

Am I a harp that the hand of the mighty may touch me, or a flute that his breath may pass through me?

Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

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

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

You who travel with the wind, what weather vane shall direct your course?

And as a single leaf turns not yellow but with the silent knowledge of the whole tree.

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.

Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?

They see only their shadows, and their shadows are their laws.

Your children are not your children.

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.

For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen,

It is not a garment I cast off this day, but a skin that I tear with my own hands.

Too many fragments of the spirit have I scattered in these streets, and too many are the children of my longing that walk naked among these hills, and I cannot withdraw from them without a burden and an ache.

Your house shall be not an anchor but a mast.

And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.

For in truth it is life that gives unto life-while you, who deem yourself a giver, are but a witness.

Joy and sorrow are inseparable, together they came and where one sits alone with you at the board remember that the other is asleep upon your bed

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

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

And let it direct your passion with reason, that your passion may livethrough its own daily resurrection, and like the phoenix rise above its own ashes.

For love is sufficient unto love.

Let not the waves of the sea separate us now, and the years you have spent in our midst become a memory.

What is fear of need but need itself?

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

And seek not the depths of your knowledge with staff or sounding line.

For that which is boundless in you abides in the mansion of the sky, whose door is the morning mist, and whose windows are the songs and the silences of night.

Like a procession you walk together towards your god-self.

When love beckons to you, follow him,

To belittle, you have to be little.

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.