Kahlil Gibran Quotes

277 Sourced Quotes

We are all sons and daughters of the Most High, but the Anointed One was His first-born, who dwelt in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, and He walked among us and we beheld Him.
All this I say that you may understand not only in the mind but rather in the spirit. The mind weighs and measures but it is the spirit that reaches the heart of life and embraces the secret; and the seed of the spirit is deathless.
The wind may blow and then cease, and the sea shall swell and then weary, but the heart of life is a sphere quiet and serene, and the star that shines therein is fixed for evermore.

Kahlil Gibran
There are the men who say, "He preached tenderness and kindliness and filial love, yet He would not heed His mother and His brothers when they sought Him in the streets of Jerusalem."
They do not know that His mother and brothers in their loving fear would have had Him return to the bench of the carpenter, whereas He was opening our eyes to the dawn of a new day.
His mother and His brothers would have had Him live in the shadow of death, but He Himself was challenging death upon yonder hill that He might live in our sleepless memory.

Kahlil Gibran
Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.

Kahlil Gibran
Long were the days of pain I have spent within its walls, and long were the nights of aloneness; and who can depart from his pain and his aloneness without regret?

Kahlil Gibran
He who wears his morality but as his best garment were better naked. The wind and the sun will tear no holes in his skin.

Kahlil Gibran
You can muffle the drum, and you can loosen the strings of the lyre, but who shall command the skylark not to sing?

Kahlil Gibran
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?

Kahlil Gibran
Solitude has soft, silky hands, but with strong fingers it grasps the heart and makes it ache with sorrow.

Kahlil Gibran
There must be something strangely sacred about salt. It is in our tears and in the sea.

Kahlil Gibran
Life without Liberty is like a body without spirit. Liberty without thought is like a disturbed spirit … Life, liberty, and thought — three persons in one substance, eternal, never-ending, and unceasing.

Kahlil Gibran
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.

Kahlil Gibran
Philosophy's work is finding the shortest path between two points.

Kahlil Gibran
Am I a harp that the hand of the mighty may touch me, or a flute that his breath may pass through me? A seeker of silences am I, and what treasure have I found in silences that I may dispense with confidence?

Kahlil Gibran
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.

Kahlil Gibran
My yearning is my cup, my burning thirst is my drink, and my solitude is my intoxication; I do not and shall not quench my thirst. But in this burning that is never extinguished is a joy that never wanes.

Kahlil Gibran
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.

Kahlil Gibran
In truth we gaze but do not see, and hearken but do not hear; we eat and drink but do not taste. And there lies the difference between Jesus of Nazareth and ourselves.
His senses were all continually made new, and the world to Him was always a new world.

Kahlil Gibran
Life without Love is like a tree without blossom and fruit.

Kahlil Gibran
The veil that clouds your eyes shall be lifted by the hands that wove it,

Kahlil Gibran
Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it so that the other half may reach you.

Kahlil Gibran
God has placed in each soul an apostle to lead us upon the illumined path. Yet many seek life from without, unaware that it is within them.

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

Kahlil Gibran
When you kill a beast, say to him in your heart: By the same power that slays you, I too am slain, and I too shall be consumed. For the law that delivers you into my hand shall deliver me into a mightier hand. Your blood and my blood is naught but the sap that feeds the tree of heaven.

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

Kahlil Gibran
You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts.

Kahlil Gibran
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.

Kahlil Gibran
Your freedom when it loses its fetters becomes itself the fetter of a greater freedom.

Kahlil Gibran
A fox looked at his shadow at sunrise and said, I will have a camel for lunch today. And all morning he went about looking for camels. But at noon he saw his shadow again-and he said, A mouse will do.

Kahlil Gibran
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.

Kahlil Gibran
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.

Kahlil Gibran