Khalil Gibran Quotes

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

You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts.

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

if you cannot but weep when your soul summons you to prayer, she should spur you again and yet again, though weeping, until you shall come laughing

And you receivers - and you are all receivers - assume no weight of gratitude, lest you lay a yoke upon yourself and upon him who gives. Rather rise together with the giver on his gifts as on wings; For to be overmindful of your debt, is to doubt his generosity who has the free hearted earth for mother, and God for father.

That which seems most feeble and bewildered in you is the strongest and most determined. Is it not your breath that has erected and hardened the structure of your bones?

Love passes by us, robed in meekness; but we flee from her in fear, or hide in the darkness; or else pursue her, to do evil in her name.

He who defines his conduct by ethics imprisons his song-bird in a cage.

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.

I once heard a learned man say, "Every evil has its remedy, except folly. To reprimand an obstinate fool or to preach to a dolt is like writing upon the water. Christ healed the blind, the halt, the palsied, and the leprous. But the fool He could not cure."

Your house is your larger body.

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

When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music. Which of you would be a reed, dumb and silent, when all else sings together in unison?

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.

He who loses his mother loses a pure soul who blesses and guards him constantly.

Your joy can fill you only as deeply as your sorrow has carved you.

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

Follow your heart. Your heart is the right guide in everything big. Mine is so limited. What you want to do is determined by that divine element that is in each of us.

The strong grows in solitude where the weak withers away.

The feelings we live through in love and in loneliness are simply, for us, what high tide and low tide are to the sea.

If indeed you must be candid, be candid beautifully.

The sea that calls all things unto her cals me, and I must embark.

I AM IGNORANT of absolute truth. But I am humble before my ignorance and therein lies my honor and my reward.

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

God has created several doors which open onto truth. He opens them to all those who knock on them with the hand of faith.

To love life through our labor is to be intimate with life's inmost secrets.

In friendship let there be laughter and sharing of pleasures.

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

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.

Solitude is a silent storm that breaks down all our dead branches; yet it sends our living roots deeper into the living heart of the living earth.

My house says to me, "do not leave me, for here dwells your past." And the road says to me, "Come and follow me, for I am your future." And I say to both my house and the road, "I have no past, nor have I a future. If I stay here, there is a going in my staying; and if I go there is a staying in my going. Only love and death change all things."

Women opened the windows of my eyes and the doors of my spirit. Had it not been for the woman-mother, the woman-sister, and the woman-friend, I would have been sleeping among those who seek the tranquility of the world with their snoring.

Would that I were a dry well, and that the people tossed stones into me, for that would be easier than to be a spring of flowing water that the thirsty pass by, and from which they avoid drinking.

Each thing that exists remains forever, and that very existence of existence is proof of its eternity. But without that realization, which is the knowledge of perfect being, man would never know whether there was existence or non-existence. If eternal existence is altered, then it must become more beautiful; and if it disappears, it must return with more sublime image; and if it sleeps, it must dream of a better awakening, for it is ever greater upon its rebirth.

Only those beneath me can envy or hate me. I have never been envied nor hated; I am above no one. Only those above me can praise or belittle me. I have never been praised nor belittled; I am below no one.

Be like the flower, turn your faces to the sun.

Beauty shall rise with the dawn from the east.

Reason is not like the goods sold in the market places--the more plentiful they are, the less they are worth. Reason's worth waxes with her abundance. But were she sold in the market, it is only the wise man who would understand her true value.

Sorrow is too great to exist in small hearts.

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

It is slavery to live in the mind unless it has become part of the body

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

Words are timeless. You should utter them or write them with a knowledge of their timelessness.

Beauty is not a need but an ecstasy. It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth, But rather a heart enflamed and a soul enchanted.

The reality of the other person is not in what he reveals to you, but in 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.

Always you have been told that work is a curse and labor a misfortune. But I say to you that when you work you fulfill a part of earth's furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream was born.

Rest in reason. Move in Passion.

He is short-sighted who looks only on the path he treads and the wall on which he leans.