Top 774 Quotes & Sayings by Khalil Gibran - Page 11

Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.

Youth is a beautiful dream, on whose brightness books shed a blinding dust. Will ever the day come when the wise link the joy of knowledge to youth's dream? Will ever the day come when Nature becomes the teacher of man, humanity his book and life his school? Youth's joyous purpose cannot be fulfilled until that day comes. Too slow is our march toward spiritual elevation, because we make so little use of youth's ardor.

you can muffle the drum, and you can loosen the strings of the lyre, but who shall command the skylark not to sing?

Love is life sharing, not for hurt, Love is alive both not ambiguous. Love is whole life, not an affair.

He was gentle, like a man mindful of his own strength. In my dreams I beheld the kings of the earth standing in awe in His presence.

Love is quivering happiness.

To barter and lose is better than not to go forth.

In every aspect of the day Jesus was aware of the Father. He beheld Him in the clouds and in the shadows of the clouds that pass over the earth.

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

Conscience is a just but weak judge. Weakness leaves it powerless to execute its judgment.

He who listens to truth is not less than he who utters truth.

And what word is knowledge but a shadow of wordless knowledge?

To know the pain of too much tenderness

I have passed the mountain peak and my soul is soaring in the firmament of Complete and unbounded freedom; I am in comfort, I am in peace.

And how shall you punish those whose remorse is already greater than their misdeeds?

Your house is your larger body. It grows in the sun and sleeps in the stillness of the night; and it is not dreamless. Does not your house dream, and dreaming, leave the city for grove or hilltop?

We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way, begin no day where we have ended another, and no sunrise finds us where left by sunset. Even while the earth sleeps we travel. We are the seeds of that tenacious plant, and it is in our ripeness and our fullness of heart that we are given to the wind to be scattered.

For what is prayer but the expansion of your self into the living ether?

Am I a harp that the hand of the mighty may touch me, or a flute that his breath may pass through me? A seeker of silences am I, and what treasure have I found in silences that I may dispense with confidence?

Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother. Doubt is a foundling unhappy and astray, and though his own mother who gave him birth should find him and enfold him, he would withdraw in caution and in fear.

The truly just is he who feels half guilty of your misdeeds.

All work is empty save when there is love.

You would measure time the measureless and the immeasurable. You would adjust your conduct and even direct the course of your spirit according to hours and seasons. Of time you would make a stream upon whose bank you would sit and watch its flowing.

Who are you that men should rend their bosom and unveil their pride, that you may see their worth naked and their pride unabashed? See first that you yourself deserve to be a giver, and an instrument of giving.

The most wonderful thing, Mary, is that you and I are always walking together, hand in hand, in a strangely beautiful world, unknown to other people. We both stretch one hand to receive from Life - and Life is generous indeed.

And when one of you falls down he falls for those behind him, a caution against the stumbling stone. Ay, and he falls for those ahead of him, who though faster and surer of foot, yet removed not the stumbling stone.

Cover me with soft earth, and let each handful be mixed With seeds ofjasmine, lilies, and myrtle; and when they Grow above me and thrive on my body's element they will Breathe the fragrance of my heart into space.

Virtue tested: "Have I not survived hunger and thirst, suffering, and mockery for the sake of the truth which heaven has awakened in my heart?

The ageless melody, unheard, heals; the healing vision, unseen, leads; the true leaders, immortal, know...

When you feel Jealousy is a sign that Love should have each other

Beauty shall rise with the dawn from the east.

Have you not heard of the man who was digging in the earth for roots and found a treasure?

For the first time the sun kissed my own naked face and my soul was inflamed with love for the sun, and I wanted my masks no more. And as if in a trance I cried, "Blessed, blessed are the thieves who stole my masks." Thus I became a madman.

But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure, then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor, into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.

Of time you would make a stream upon whose bank you would sit and watch its flowing. Yet 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.

That deed which in our guilt we today call weakness, will appear tomorrow as an essential link in the complete chain of Man.

A poet is a bird of unearthly excellence, who escapes from his celestial realm arrives in this world warbling. If we do not cherish him, he spreads his wings and flies back into his homeland.

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.

In a dream I saw Jesus and My God Pan sitting together in the heart of the forest. They laughed at each other's speech, with the brook that ran near them, and the laughter of Jesus was the merrier. And they conversed long.

You cannot lay remorse upon the innocent nor lift it from the heart of the guilty. Unbidden shall it call in the night, that men may wake and gaze upon themselves.

Let there be spaces in your togetherness...just as strings of a lute dance alone though they quiver with the same music.

Yesterday is ever jealous of...tomorrow.

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

Why dispute what we shall be, when we know not even what we are.

In truth you owe naught to any man. You owe to all men.

And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit. For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable is caught.

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.

Life is the mistress to be wooed.

Give me an ear and I will give you a Voice.

Poetry is not the opinion stated. It is a song that appears instead of a bloody wound or a smiling mouth.

A shy failure is nobler than an immodest success.

They tell me: If you see a slave sleeping, do not wake him lest he be dreaming of freedom. I tell them: If you see a slave sleeping, wake him and explain to him freedom.

And that which sings and contemplates in you is still dwelling within the bounds of that first moment which scattered the stars into space.

And let to-day embrace the past with remembrance and the future with longing.

The envier praises me unknowingly.

Your thought describes laws, courts, judges, punishments. Mine explains that when man makes a law, he either violates it or obeys it. If there is a basic law, we are all one before it. He who disdains the mean is himself mean. He who vaunts his scorn of the sinful vaunts his disdain of all humanity.

For truth and the spirit will abide with the morrow.

Thus with my lips have I denounced you, while my heart, bleeding within me, called you tender names.

Man is like the foam of the sea, that floats upon the surface of the water. When the wind blows, it vanishes, as if it had never been. Thus are our lives blown away by Death.

For the sight of the angry weather saddens my soul and the sight of the town, sitting like a bereaved mother beneath layers of ice, oppresses my heart.