Kahlil Gibran Quotes

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

We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.

The smallest act of kindness is worth more than the greatest intention.

Music is the language of the spirit. It opens the secret of life bringing peace, abolishing strife.

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.

Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity.

You may forget the one with whom you have laughed, but never the one with whom you have wept.

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

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.

You pray in your distress and in your need; would that you might also pray in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance.

To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but at what he aspires to.

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 for I will not sell my days for gold; I deem them mad for they think my days have a price.

If you reveal your secrets to the wind you should not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees.

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

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.

Yesterday is but today's memory, tomorrow is today's dream.

Trust in dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.

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.

Sadness is but a wall between two gardens.

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?

Life without liberty is like a body without spirit.

An eye for an eye, and the whole world would be blind.

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

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.

I wash my hands of those who imagine chattering to be knowledge, silence to be ignorance, and affection to be art.

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.

The most pitiful among men is he who turns his dreams into silver and gold.

Faith is an oasis in the heart which will never be reached by the caravan of thinking.

Love and doubt have never been on speaking terms.

All that spirits desire, spirits attain.

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

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

Let there be spaces in your togetherness.

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.

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

Love is the only freedom in the world because it so elevates the spirit that the laws of humanity and the phenomena of nature do not alter its course

Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love.

Desire is half of life; indifference is half of death.

Generosity is not giving me that which I need more than you do, but it is giving me that which you need more than I do.

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

Faith is a knowledge within the heart, beyond the reach of proof.

Accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.

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.

Wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving.

Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.

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.

Wisdom stands at the turn in the road and calls upon us publicly, but we consider it false and despise its adherents.

Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.

Perplexity is the beginning of knowledge.

If the grandfather of the grandfather of Jesus had known what was hidden within him, he would have stood humble and awe-struck before his soul.

If you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work.

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

Coming generations will learn equality from poverty, and love from woes.

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

Yes, there is a Nirvanah; it is leading your sheep to a green pasture, and in putting your child to sleep, and in writing the last line of your poem

Advance, and never halt, for advancing is perfection. Advance and do not fear the thorns in the path, for they draw only corrupt blood.

Time has been transformed, and we have changed; it has advanced and set us in motion; it has unveiled its face, inspiring us with bewilderment and exhilaration.

No man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.

Zeal is a volcano, the peak of which the grass of indecisiveness does not grow.

Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.

There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward.

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

Nor shall derision prove powerful against those who listen to humanity or those who follow in the footsteps of divinity, for they shall live forever. Forever.

The reality of the other person lies not in what he reveals to you, but what he cannot reveal to you. Therefore, if you would understand him, listen not to what he says, but rather to what he does not say.

Pain and foolishness lead to great bliss and complete knowledge, for Eternal Wisdom created nothing under the sun in vain.

It is well go give when asked but it is better to give unasked, through understanding.

Poverty is a veil that obscures the face of greatness. An appeal is a mask covering the face of tribulation.

For Reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and Passion, unattended,is a flame that burns to its own destruction.

Say not, 'I have found the truth,' but rather, 'I have found a truth.'

If my survival caused another to perish, then death would be sweeter and more beloved.

The lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest and then becomes a host, and then a master.

The chemist who can extract from his heart's elements compassion, respect, longing, patience, regret, surprise, and forgiveness and compound them into one can create that atom which is called love.