Explore popular quotes and sayings by a Lebanese poet Khalil Gibran.
Last updated on October 10, 2024.
Gibran Khalil Gibran, usually referred to in English as Kahlil Gibran, was a Lebanese-American writer, poet and visual artist, also considered a philosopher although he himself rejected the title. He is best known as the author of The Prophet, which was first published in the United States in 1923 and has since become one of the best-selling books of all time, having been translated into more than 100 languages.
A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle.
Life without liberty is like a body without spirit.
If your heart is a volcano, how shall you expect flowers to bloom?
Your daily life is your temple and your religion. When you enter into it take with you your all.
Rebellion without truth is like spring in a bleak, arid desert.
Trust in dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.
Sadness is but a wall between two gardens.
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.
The eye of a human being is a microscope, which makes the world seem bigger than it really is.
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.
Perplexity is the beginning of knowledge.
If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. And if they don't, they never were.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing. And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb. And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.
Safeguarding the rights of others is the most noble and beautiful end of a human being.
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.
Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love.
If in the twilight of memory we should meet once more, we shall speak again together and you shall sing to me a deeper song.
Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.
Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity.
For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.
The most pitiful among men is he who turns his dreams into silver and gold.
We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.
I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers.
Yesterday is but today's memory, and tomorrow is today's dream.
In the 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.
There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward.
Faith is an oasis in the heart which will never be reached by the caravan of thinking.
Love possesses not nor will it be possessed, for love is sufficient unto love.
Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it becomes too proud to weep, too grave to laugh, and too selfish to seek other than itself.
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.
And ever has it been known that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.
Love is trembling happiness.
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.
If you reveal your secrets to the wind, you should not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees.
Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.
Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.
Work is love made visible. And if you cannot 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 those who work with joy.
To be able to look back upon ones life in satisfaction, is to live twice.
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?
And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.
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.
Love one another, but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit.
Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.
Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens.
Generosity is giving more than you can, and pride is taking less than you need.
The lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and then becomes a host, and then a master.
Let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.
Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They came through you but not from you and though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but at what he aspires to.
Truth is a deep kindness that teaches us to be content in our everyday life and share with the people the same happiness.
Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.
Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing toward what will be.
Faith is a knowledge within the heart, beyond the reach of proof.
Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.
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.
Knowledge of the self is the mother of all knowledge. So it is incumbent on me to know my self, to know it completely, to know its minutiae, its characteristics, its subtleties, and its very atoms.
Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
Are you a politician asking what your country can do for you or a zealous one asking what you can do for your country? If you are the first, then you are a parasite; if the second, then you are an oasis in the desert.