Kahlil Gibran Quotes

“To know the pain of too much tenderness”

“Your reason and your passion are your rudder and sails of your seafaring soul, if either your sails or your rudder be broken, you can but toss and drift, or else be held at a standstill in mid-seas. For reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction.”

“Limited love asks for possession of the beloved, but the unlimited asks only for itself.”

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

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

“Then it is also in my heart to be worthy of your hate.”

“People of Orphalese, beauty is life when life unveils her holy face. But you are life and you are the veil. Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror. But you are eternity and you are the mirror.”

“Who are you that men should rend their bosom and unveil their pride, that you may see their worth naked and their pride unabashed? See first that you yourself deserve to be a giver, and an instrument of giving.”

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

“Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart.”

“I purified my lips with sacred fire that I might speak of love, but when I opened my mouth to speak, I found myself mute.”

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

“My proof convinces the ignorant, and the wise man's proof convinces me. But he whose reasoning falls between wisdom and ignorance, I neither can convince him, nor can he convince me.”

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

“You are persecuted and despised. It were better that a person should be the oppressed than that he should be the oppressor; and fitter that he should be a victim to the frailty of human instincts than that he should be powerful and crush the flowers of life and disfigure the beauties of feeling with his desire.”

“In truth you owe naught to any man. You owe to all men.”

“Philosophy's work is finding the shortest path between two points.”

“You are far, far greater than you know - and all is well.”

“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”

“Tenderness and kindness are not signs of weakness and despair, but manifestations of strength and resolution.”

“And how shall you punish those whose remorse is already greater than their misdeeds?”

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

“Love one another, but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.”

“You would measure time the measureless and the immeasurable. You would adjust your conduct and even direct the course of your spirit according to hours and seasons. Of time you would make a stream upon whose bank you would sit and watch its flowing.”

“I would not exchange the laughter of my heart for the fortunes of the multitudes.”