428 Interesting Quotes by Kahlil Gibran
Welcome to our collection of quotes by Kahlil Gibran. We hope you enjoy pondering them and please share widely.
Wikipedia Summary for Khalil Gibran
Gibran Khalil Gibran (Arabic: جبران خليل جبران, ALA-LC: Jubrān Khalīl Jubrān, pronounced [ʒʊˈbraːn xaˈliːl ʒʊˈbraːn], or Jibrān Khalīl Jibrān, pronounced [ʒɪˈbraːn xaˈliːl ʒɪˈbraːn]; January 6, 1883 – April 10, 1931), usually referred to in English as Kahlil Gibran (pronounced kah-LEEL ji-BRAHN), was a Lebanese-American writer, poet and visual artist, also considered a philosopher although he himself rejected the title. He is best known as the author of The Prophet, which was first published in the United States in 1923 and has since become one of the best-selling books of all time, having been translated into more than 100 languages.
Born in a village of the Ottoman-ruled Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate to a Maronite family, the young Gibran immigrated with his mother and siblings to the United States in 1895. As his mother worked as a seamstress, he was enrolled at a school in Boston, where his creative abilities were quickly noticed by a teacher who presented him to photographer and publisher F. Holland Day. Gibran was sent back to his native land by his family at the age of fifteen to enroll at the Collège de la Sagesse in Beirut. Returning to Boston upon his youngest sister's death in 1902, he lost his older half-brother and his mother the following year, seemingly relying afterwards on his remaining sister's income from her work at a dressmaker's shop for some time.
In 1904, Gibran's drawings were displayed for the first time at Day's studio in Boston, and his first book in Arabic was published in 1905 in New York City. With the financial help of a newly met benefactress, Mary Haskell, Gibran studied art in Paris from 1908 to 1910. While there, he came in contact with Syrian political thinkers promoting rebellion in the Ottoman Empire after the Young Turk Revolution; some of Gibran's writings, voicing the same ideas as well as anti-clericalism, would eventually be banned by the Ottoman authorities. In 1911, Gibran settled in New York, where his first book in English, The Madman, would be published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1918, with writing of The Prophet or The Earth Gods also underway. His visual artwork was shown at Montross Gallery in 1914, and at the galleries of M. Knoedler & Co. in 1917. He had also been corresponding remarkably with May Ziadeh since 1912. In 1920, Gibran re-founded the Pen League with fellow Mahjari poets. By the time of his death at the age of 48 from cirrhosis and incipient tuberculosis in one lung, he had achieved literary fame on "both sides of the Atlantic Ocean," and The Prophet had already been translated into German and French. His body was transferred to his birth village of Bsharri (in present-day Lebanon), to which he had bequeathed all future royalties on his books, and where a museum dedicated to his works now stands.
As worded by Suheil Bushrui and Joe Jenkins, Gibran's life has been described as one "often caught between Nietzschean rebellion, Blakean pantheism and Sufi mysticism." Gibran discussed different themes in his writings, and explored diverse literary forms. Salma Khadra Jayyusi has called him "the single most important influence on Arabic poetry and literature during the first half of [the twentieth] century," and he is still celebrated as a literary hero in Lebanon. At the same time, "most of Gibran's paintings expressed his personal vision, incorporating spiritual and mythological symbolism," with art critic Alice Raphael recognizing in the painter a classicist, whose work owed "more to the findings of Da Vinci than it [did] to any modern insurgent." His "prodigious body of work" has been described as "an artistic legacy to people of all nations."
You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.
Pain and foolishness lead to great bliss and complete knowledge, for Eternal Wisdom created nothing under the sun in vain.
Truth is a deep kindness that teaches us to be content in our everyday life and share with the people the same happiness.
Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.
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.
Trees are poems that the earth writes upon the sky.
Longer Version/[Notes]:
Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky,
We fell them down and turn them into paper,
That we may record our emptiness.
In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter and sharing of pleasure. For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.
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.
And when you crush an apple with your teeth, say to it in your heart:
Your seeds shall live in my body,
And the buds of your tomorrow shall blossom in my heart,
And your fragrance shall be my breath,
And together we shall rejoice through all the seasons.
I slept and I dreamed that life is all joy. I woke and I saw that life is all service. I served and I saw that service is joy.
The appearance of things changes according to the emotions; and thus we see magic and beauty in them, while the magic and beauty are really in ourselves.
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.
And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.
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 friend is your needs answered.
Longer Version/[Notes]:
Your friend is your needs answered. He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving. And he is your board and your fireside. For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.
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?
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.
Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.
Longer Version/[Notes]:
Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror. But you are eternity and you are the mirror.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
Longer Version/[Notes]:
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth./nThe archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
What the soul knows is often unknown to the man who has a soul. We are infinitely more than we think.
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.
You often say, "I would give, but only to the deserving." The trees in your orchard say not so, nor the flocks in your pasture. They give that they may live, for to withhold is to perish.
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.
Love is a sacred mystery.
To those who love, it remains forever wordless;
But to those who do not love, it may be but a heartless jest.
Do not keep crying when your love has been gone. You only need Smile because he had been given you the opportunity to meet someone who is better.
No human relation gives one possession in another—every two souls are absolutely different. In friendship or in love, the two side by side raise hands together to find what one cannot reach alone.
The mother is everything - she is our consolation in sorrow, our hope in misery, and our strength in weakness. She is the source of love, mercy, sympathy, and forgiveness. He who loses his mother loses a pure soul who blesses and guards him constantly
Spiritual awakening is the most essential thing in man's life, and it is the sole purpose of being. Is not civilization, in all its tragic forms, a supreme motive for spiritual awakening?
Love is a magic ray emitted from the burning core of the soul and illuminating the surrounding earth. It enables us to perceive life as a beautiful dream between one awakening and another.
They deem me mad because I will not sell my days for gold; and I deem them mad because they think my days have a price.
Many of us spend our whole lives running from feeling with the mistaken belief that you can not bear the pain. But you have already borne the pain. What you have not done is feel all you are beyond that pain.
You may chain my hands, you may shackle my feet; you may even throw me into a dark prison; but you shall not enslave my thinking, because it is free!
If I could take your troubles
I would toss them into the sea,
But all these things I'm finding
Are impossible for me.
I cannot build a mountain
Or catch a rainbow fair,
But let me be what I know best,
A friend that is always there.
What difference is there between us, save a restless dream that follows my soul but fears to come near you?
Death most resembles a prophet who is without honor in his own land or a poet who is a stranger among his people.
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.
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.
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.
Poverty is a veil that obscures the face of greatness. An appeal is a mask covering the face of tribulation.
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.
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.
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.
Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it becomes too proud to weep, too grave to laugh, and too selfish to seek other than itself.
I prefer to be a dreamer among the humblest, with visions to be realized, than lord among those without dreams and desires.
Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.
Longer Version/[Notes]:
Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother. Doubt is a foundling unhappy and astray, and though his own mother who gave him birth should find him and enfold him, he would withdraw in caution and in fear.
Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love.
Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.
The optimist sees the rose and not its thorns; the pessimist stares at the thorns, oblivious to the rose.
Sow a seed and the earth will yield you a flower.
Dream your dream to the sky and it will bring you your beloved.
And think not you can direct the course of love, For love, If it finds you worthy, Directs your course.
And let it direct your passion with reason, that your passion may live through its own daily resurrection, and like the phoenix rises above its own ashes.
There are those among you who seek the talkative through fear of being alone. The silence of aloneness reveals to their eyes their naked selves and they would escape.
When you part from your friend, you grieve not;
For that which you love most in him may be
clearer in his absence,
as the mountain to the climber
is clearer from the plain.
Yet you shall not deplore having known blindness, nor regret having been deaf. For in that day you shall know the hidden purposes in all things. And you shall bless darkness as you would bless light.
Between the shores of the oceans and the summit of the highest mountain is a secret route that you must absolutely take before being one with the sons of the Earth.
They have exiled me now from their society and I am pleased, because humanity does not exile except the one whose noble spirit rebels against despotism and oppression. He who does not prefer exile to slavery is not free by any measure of freedom.
In every winter's heart there is a quivering spring, and behind the veil of each night there is a shining dawn.
No man can reveal to you nothing but that which already lies half-asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.
Longer Version/[Notes]:
No man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.
The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple, among his followers, gives not of his wisdom but rather of his faith and his lovingness.
If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind.
How can I lose faith in the justice of life, when the dreams of those who sleep upon feathers are not more beautiful than the dreams of those who sleep upon the earth?
For in truth it is life that gives unto life-while you, who deem yourself a giver, are but a witness.
And one of the elders of the city, said, speak to us of good and evil.
And he answered:
You are good in countless ways, and you are not evil when you are not good.
You are good when you walk to your goal firmly and with bold steps.
Yet you are not evil when you go thither limping.
For those who limp go not backwards.
But you who are strong and swift, see that you do not limp before the lame, deeming it kindness.
Your house shall be not an anchor but a mast
It shall not be a glistening film that covers a wound, but an eyelid that guards the eye.
Your house is your larger body.
Longer Version/[Notes]:
Your house is your larger body. It grows in the sun and sleeps in the stillness of the night; and it is not dreamless. Does not your house dream, and dreaming, leave the city for grove or hilltop?
Should we all confess our sins to one another we would all laugh at one another for our lack of originality.
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.
Persecution cannot harm him who stands by Truth. Did not Socrates fall proudly a victim in body? Was not Paul stoned for the sake of the Truth? It is our inner selves that hurt us when we disobey it, and it kills us when we betray it.
True love cannot be found where it truly does not exist, Nor can it be hidden where it truly does. Anonymous Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; For love is sufficient unto love.
The lights of stars that were extinguished ages ago still reaches us. So it is with great men who died centuries ago, but still reach us with the radiations of their personalities.
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.
Longer Version/[Notes]:
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.
You cannot lay remorse upon the innocent nor lift it from the heart of the guilty. Unbidden shall it call in the night, that men may wake and gaze upon themselves.
The thirst of soul is sweeter than the wine of material things, and the fear of spirit is dearer than the security of the body.
Your confidence in the people, and your doubt about them, are closely related to your self-confidence and your self-doubt.
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.
Those to whom worshiping is a window, to open but also to shut, have not yet visited the house of their souls whose windows are open from dawn to dawn.
Should you really open your eyes and see, you would behold your image in all images. And should you open your ears and listen, you would hear your own voice in all voices.
Even as the holy and the righteous cannot rise beyond the highest which is in each one of you, so the wicked and the weak cannot fall lower than the lowest which is in you also.
But I say that even as the holy and the righteous cannot rise beyond the highest which is in each one of you,
So the wicked and the weak cannot fall lower than the lowest which is in you also.
That deed which in our guilt we today call weakness, will appear tomorrow as an essential link in the complete chain of Man.
I use hate as a weapon to defend myself; had I been strong, I would never have needed that kind of weapon.
The I in me, my friend, dwells in the house of silence, and therein it shall remain for ever more, unperceived, unapproachable.
Thus with my lips have I denounced you, while my heart, bleeding within me, called you tender names.
Longer Version/[Notes]:
Thus with my lips have I denounced you, while my heart, bleeding within me, called you tender names. It was love lashed by its own self that spoke. It was pride half slain that fluttered in the dust. It was my hunger for your love that raged from the housetop, while my own love, kneeling in silence, prayed your forgiveness.
Extreme torture is mute, and so we sat silent, petrified, like columns of marble buried under the sand of an earthquake. Neither wished to listen to the other because our heart-threads had become weak and even breathing would have broken them.
Saying this, he turned his head toward the window as if he were trying to solve the problems of human existence by concentrating on the beauty of the universe.
The soul is an embryo in the body of Man, and the day of death is the Day of awakening, for it is the Great era of labour and the rich Hour of creation.
When you were a wandering desire in the mist, I too was there, a wandering desire. Then we sought one another, and out of our eagerness dreams were born. And dreams were time limitless, and dreams were space without measure.
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.
Let us disperse from our aloofness and serve the weak who made us strong, and cleanse the country in which we live. Let us teach this miserable nation to smile and rejoice with heaven's bounty and glory of life and freedom.
