Khalil Gibran Quotations

Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity.

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

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.

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

And ever has it been known that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.

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

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

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.

But let there be spaces in your togetherness and let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. And if they don't, they never were.

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

I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers.

Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, and though they are with you, yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love, but not your thoughts. For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward, nor tarries with yesterday.

Love possesses not nor will it be possessed, for love is sufficient unto love.

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.

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.

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

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

Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.

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

When love beckons to you, follow him, Though his ways are hard and steep. And when his wings enfold you yield to him, Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.

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?

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

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

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.

Where is the justice of political power if it executes the murderer and jails the plunderer, and then itself marches upon neighboring lands, killing thousands and pillaging the very hills?

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

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

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

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

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.

Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing toward what will be.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

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

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

Generosity is giving more than you can, and pride is taking less than you need.

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

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?

Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it becomes too proud to weep, too grave to laugh, and too selfish to seek other than itself.

Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit.

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.

Let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.

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

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.

Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.

love one another, but make not a bond of love: let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup. give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

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.

Death most resembles a prophet who is without honor in his own land or a poet who is a stranger among his people.

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

The eye of a human being is a microscope, which makes the world seem bigger than it really is.

When we turn to one another for counsel we reduce the number of our enemies.

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.

The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind.

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.

You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

What difference is there between us, save a restless dream that follows my soul but fears to come near you?

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

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

Life without liberty is like a body without spirit.

For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.

The person you consider ignorant and insignificant is the one who came from God, that he might learn bliss from grief and knowledge from gloom.

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

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

I existed from all eternity and, behold, I am here; and I shall exist till the end of time, for my being has no end.

Art is a step from what is obvious and well-known toward what is arcane and concealed.

Rebellion without truth is like spring in a bleak, arid desert.

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

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.

Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing. And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb. And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.

The just is close to the people's heart, but the merciful is close to the heart of God.

No man can reveal to you nothing but that which already lies half-asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.

What is this world that is hastening me toward I know not what, viewing me with contempt?

Most people who ask for advice from others have already resolved to act as it pleases them.

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

Exaggeration is truth that has lost its temper.

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

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

Many a doctrine is like a window pane. We see truth through it but it divides us from truth.

To be able to look back upon ones life in satisfaction, is to live twice.

Hallow the body as a temple to comeliness and sanctify the heart as a sacrifice to love; love recompenses the adorers.

They consider me to have sharp and penetrating vision because I see them through the mesh of a sieve.

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.

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.

All our words are but crumbs that fall down from the feast of the mind.

Sadness is but a wall between two gardens.

I prefer to be a dreamer among the humblest, with visions to be realized, than lord among those without dreams and desires.

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.

A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle.

Your daily life is your temple and your religion. When you enter into it take with you your all.

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

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.

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

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

The obvious is that which is never seen until someone expresses it simply.

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

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.

Love and doubt have never been on speaking terms.