Kahlil Gibran quotes (118):

  • Advance, and never halt, for advancing is perfection. Advance and do not fear the thorns in the path, for they draw only corrupt blood.
  • Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love.
  • Cast aside those who liken godliness to whimsy and who try to combine their greed for wealth with their desire for a happy afterlife.
  • Hallow the body as a temple to comeliness and sanctify the heart as a sacrifice to love love recompenses the adorers.
  • Life without liberty is like a body without spirit.
  • 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.
  • You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
  • We were a silent, hidden thought in the folds of oblivion, and we have become a voice that causes the heavens to tremble.
  • Safeguarding the rights of others is the most noble and beautiful end of a human being.
  • Knowledge cultivates your seeds and does not sow in you seeds.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • All that spirits desire, spirits attain.
  • Wisdom stands at the turn in the road and calls upon us publicly, but we consider it false and despise its adherents.
  • 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.
  • I wash my hands of those who imagine chattering to be knowledge, silence to be ignorance, and affection to be art.
  • 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 my survival caused another to perish, then death would be sweeter and more beloved.
  • Zeal is a volcano, the peak of which the grass of indecisiveness does not grow.
  • Poverty is a veil that obscures the face of greatness. An appeal is a mask covering the face of tribulation.
  • 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
  • Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit.
  • What do the nationalists say about killers punishing murderers and thieves sentencing looters
  • 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.
  • Pain and foolishness lead to great bliss and complete knowledge, for Eternal Wisdom created nothing under the sun in vain.
  • 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.
  • We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.
  • 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.
  • I have learnt silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers.
  • 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.
  • What is this world that is hastening me toward I know not what, viewing me with contempt
  • The eye of a human being is a microscope, which makes the world seem bigger than it really is.
  • 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.
  • Death most resembles a prophet who is without honor in his own land or a poet who is a stranger among his people.
  • What difference is there between us, save a restless dream that follows my soul but fears to come near you
  • 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.
  • Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing toward what will be.
  • The tears that you spill, the sorrowful, are sweeter than the laughter of snobs and the guffaws of scoffers.
  • Coming generations will learn equality from poverty, and love from woes.
  • 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.
  • The light of the stars that were extinguished ages ago still reaches us. So is it with great men who died centuries ago, but still reach us with the radiations of their personality.
  • Keep me away from the wisdom that does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.
  • If you reveal your secrets to the wind you should not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees.
  • Art arises when the secret vision of the artist and the manefestation of nature agree to find new shapes.
  • The optimist sees the rose and not its thorns the pessimist stares at the thorns, oblivious to the rose.
  • Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.
  • Perplexity is the beginning of knowledge.
  • The timeless in you is aware of life's timelessness and knows that yesterday is but today's memory and tomorrow is today's dream.