Khalil Gibran Quotes

For the criminal who is weak and poor the narrow cell of death awaits; but honor and glory await the rich who conceal their crimes behind their gold and silver and inherited glory.

Work is love made visible.

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

When you reach the heart of life you shall find beauty in all things, even in the eyes that are blind to beauty.

A teacher can only lead you to the threshold of your own mind.

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

For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons, and to step out of life’s procession that marches in majesty and proud submission towards the infinite.

Do not be merciful, but be just, for mercy is bestowed upon the guilty criminal, while Justice is all that the innocent man requires.

Believing is a fine thing, but placing those beliefs into execution is a test of strength. Many are those who talk like the roar of the sea, gut their lives are shallow and stagnant, like the rotting marshes. Many are those who lift their heads above the mountain tops, but their spirits remain dormant in the obscurity of the caverns.

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. And if our hands should meet in another dream we shall build another tower in the sky.

The fool sees naught but folly; and the madman only madness. Yesterday I asked a foolish man to count the fools among us. He laughed and said, "This is too hard a thing to do, and it will take too long. Were it not better to count only the wise?"

If your heart is a volcano, how shall you expect flowers to bloom?

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

The best love come from the heart, not from the mouth.

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.

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

Knowledge cultivates your seeds and does not sow in your seeds.

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.

And as a single leaf turns not yellow but with the silent knowledge of the whole tree.

A hermit is one who renounces the world of fragments that he may enjoy the world wholly and without interruption.

Truth is a deep kindness that teaches us to be content in our everyday life and share with the people the same happiness.

Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.

You are your own forerunner, and the towers you have builded are but the foundation of your giant-self. And that self too shall be a foundation.

Hell is not in torture; Hell is in an empty heart.

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

Humanity is a river of light running from the ex-eternity to eternity.

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

And if there come the singers, and the dancers and the flute players - buy of their gifts also. For they too are gatherers of fruit and frankincense, and that which they bring, though fashioned of dreams, is raiment and fod for your soul.

To be closer to god, be closer to people.

Lovers embrace that which is between them rather than each other.

There is no secret in the mystery of life stronger and more beautiful than that attachment which converts the silence of a virgin's spirit into a perpetual awareness that makes a person forget the past, for it kindles fiercely in the heart the sweet and overwhelming hope of the coming future.

To belittle, you have to be little.

Education sows not seeds in you, but makes your seeds grow.

How often have you sailed in my dreams. And now you come in my awakening, which is my deeper dream.

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.

Much of your pain is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.

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.

But you who walk facing the sun, what images drawn on the earth can hold you? You who travel with the wind, what weathervane shall direct your course? What man's law shall bind you if you break your yoke but upon no man's prison door? What laws shall you fear if you dance but stumble against no man's iron chains? And who is he that shall bring you to judgment if you tear off your garment yet leave it in no man's path? People of Orphalese, you can muffle the drum, and you can loosen the strings of the lyre, but who shall command the skylark not to sing?

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.

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.

Love... it surrounds every being and extends slowly to embrace all that shall be.

Like the seeds dreaming beneath the snow your heart dreams of spring.

Nature reaches out to us with welcoming arms, and bids us enjoy her beauty; but we dread her silence and rush into the crowded cities, there to huddle like sheep fleeing from a ferocious wolf.

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

In one drop of water are found all the secrets of all the oceans; in one aspect of You are found all the aspects of existence.

I discovered the secret of the sea in meditation upon a dewdrop.

The longing for paradise is paradise itself.

Seven times have I despised my soul: The sixth time when she despised the ugliness of a face, and knew not that it was one of her own masks.