Top 774 Quotes & Sayings by Khalil Gibran - Page 6

Even as the holy and the righteous cannot rise beyond the highest which is in each one of you, so the wicked and the weak cannot fall lower than the lowest which is in you also.

Life without Liberty is like a body without spirit. Liberty without thought is like a disturbed spirit.

From a sensitive woman's heart springs the happiness of mankind, and from the kindness of her noble spirit comes mankind's affection.

I came here to be for all and with all, and what I do today in my solitude will be echoed tomorrow by the multitude. What I say now with one heart will be said tomorrow by thousands of hearts.

Love is the gentle smile upon the lips of beauty.

True love cannot be found where it truly does not exist, Nor can it be hidden where it truly does. Anonymous Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; For love is sufficient unto love.

life unfolds itself in mysteries ways.

The bird has an honor that man does not have. Man lives in the traps of his abdicated laws and traditions; but the birds live according to the natural law of God who causes the earth to turn around the sun.

I am a poet who composes what life proses, and who proses what life composes.

Then it is also in my heart to be worthy of your hate.

The very strength that protects the heart from injury is the strength that prevents the heart from enlarging to its intended greatness within. The song of the voice is sweet, but the song of the heart is the pure voice of heaven.

Love has the power that dispels death; charm that conquers the enemy.

The first thought of God was an angel. The first word of God was a man

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

God has bestowed upon you intelligence and knowledge. Do not extinguish the lamp of Divine Grace and do not let the candle of wisdom die out in the darkness of lust and error. For a wise man approaches with his torch to light up the path of mankind.

When God threw me, a pebble, into this wondrous lake, I disturbed its surface with countless circles. But when I reached the depths, I became very still.

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.

It has been said that next to hunger and thirst, our most basic human need is for storytelling.

I purified my lips with sacred fire that I might speak of love, but when I opened my mouth to speak, I found myself mute.

Life is weaker than Death and Death is weaker than Truth.

Would that I could be the peacemaker in your soul, that I might turn the discord and the rivalry of your elements into oneness and melody.

Spiritual awakening is the most essential thing in man's life, and it is the sole purpose of being. Is not civilization, in all its tragic forms, a supreme motive for spiritual awakening?

And if you would know God, be not therefore a solver of riddles. Rather look about you and you shall see Him playing with your children. And look into space; you shall see Him walking in the cloud, outstretching His arms in the lightning and descending in rain. You shall see Him smiling in flowers, then rising and waving His hands in trees.

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.

If indeed you must be candid, be candid beautifully.

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 youyourself deserve to be a giver , and an insturument of giving. For in truth it is life that gives unto life-while you , who deem yourself a giver , is but a witness.

The things which the child loves remain in the domain of the heart until old age. The most beautiful thing in life is that our souls remain hovering over the places where we once enjoyed ourselves. I am one of those who remembers those places regardless of distance or time.

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.

For thought is a bird of space, that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly.

Real beauty lies in the spiritual accord that is called love which can exist between a man and a woman.

When we oppose the hidden conscience, it does us hurt. When we betray it, it judges us.

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

The truly good is he who is one with all those who are deemed bad.

The significance of a man is not in what he attains, but rather what he longs to attain.

The heart's affections are divided like the branches of the cedar tree; if the tree loses one strong branch; it will suffer but it does not die; it will pour all its vitality into the next branch so that it will grow and fill the empty place.

At ebb tide I wrote a line upon the sand, and gave it all my heart and all my soul. At flood tide I returned to read what I had inscribed and found my ignorance upon the shore.

Marriage is like a golden ring in a chain, whose beginning is a glance and whose ending is eternity.

Trickery succeeds sometimes, but it always commits suicide.

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.

Death changes nothing but the mask that covers our faces.

The optimist sees the rose and not its thorns; the pessimist stares at the thorns, oblivious to the rose.

Your saying 'I do not understand you' is praise beyond my worth, and an insult you do not deserve.

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

For a love to grow through the test of everyday living, one must respect that zone of privacy where one retires to relate to the inside instead of the outside.

A woman whom Providence has provided with beauty of spirit and body is a truth, at the same time both open and secret, which we can understand only by love, and touch only by virtue.

Madness is the first step towards unselfishness. Be mad and tell us what is behind the veil of "sanity". The purpose of life is to bring us closer to those secrets, and madness is the only means.

And now you ask in your heart, ‘How shall we distinguish that which is good in pleasure from that which is not good?’ Go to your fields and your gardens, and you shall learn that it is the pleasure of the bee to gather honey of the flower, But it is also the pleasure of the flower to yield its honey to the bee. For to the bee a flower is a fountain of life, And to the flower a bee is a messenger of love, And to both, bee and flower, the giving and the receiving of pleasure is a need and an ecstasy. * People of Orphalese, be in your pleasures like the flowers and the bees.

Prayer is the song of the heart. It reaches the ear of God even if it is mingled with the cry and the tumult of a thousand men.

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the same 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. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven? And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?

I am one of those who believe that spiritual progress is a rule of human life, but the approach to perfection is slow and painful. If a woman elevates herself in one respect and is retarded in another, it is because the rough trail that leads to the mountain peak is not free of ambushes of thieves and lairs of wolves.

Be patient, for it is from doubt that knowledge is born.

You would know the secret of death. But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heath of life? The owl whose night-bound eyes are blind unto the day cannot unveil the mystery of light. If you would indeed behold the spirit of death, open your heart wide unto the body of life. For life and death are one, even as the river and sea are one. For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?

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.

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.

Sow a seed and the earth will yield you a flower. Dream your dream to the sky and it will bring you your beloved.

Art arises when the secret vision of the artist and the manifestation of nature agree to find new shapes.

Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and the nights. But your ears thirst for the sound of the heart's knowledge. You would know in words that which you have always known in thought. You would touch with your fingers the naked body of the dreams.

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.

Your confidence in the people, and your doubt about them, are closely related to your self-confidence and your self-doubt.

He who has not looked on Sorrow will never see Joy.