Kahlil Gibran Quotes

277 Sourced Quotes

Master, Master Poet,
Master of words sung and spoken,
They have builded temples to house your name,
And upon every height they have raised your cross,
A sign and a symbol to guide their wayward feet,
But not unto your joy.
Your joy is a hill beyond their vision,
And it does not comfort them.
They would honour the man unknown to them.
And what consolation is there in a man like themselves, a man whose
kindliness is like their own kindliness,
A god whose love is like their own love,
And whose mercy is in their own mercy?
They honour not the man, the living man,
The first man who opened His eyes and gazed at the sun
With eyelids unquivering.
Nay, they do not know Him, and they would not be like Him.

Kahlil Gibran
All you have shall some day be given. Therefore give now, that the season of giving may be yours and not your inheritors.

Kahlil Gibran
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?

Kahlil Gibran
Cover me with soft earth, and let each handful be mixed With seeds ofjasmine, lilies, and myrtle; and when they Grow above me and thrive on my body's element they will Breathe the fragrance of my heart into space.

Kahlil Gibran
I know faces, because I look through the fabric my own eye weaves, and behold the reality beneath.

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

Kahlil Gibran
Your clothes conceal much of your beauty, yet they hide not the unbeautiful.
And though you seek in garments the freedom of privacy, you may find in them a harness and a drain.
Would that you could meet the sun and the wind with more of your body and less of your raiment.

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

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

Kahlil Gibran
And let it direct your passion with reason, that your passion may livethrough its own daily resurrection, and like the phoenix rise above its own ashes.

Kahlil Gibran
A poet is a bird of unearthly excellence, who escapes from his celestial realm [and] arrives in this world warbling. If we do not cherish him, he spreads his wings and flies back into his homeland.

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

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

Kahlil Gibran
A voice cannot carry the tongue and the lips that gave it wings. Alone must it seek the ether. And alone and without his nest shall the eagle fly across the sun.

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
Only then shall you know that the erect and the fallen are but one man standing in twilight between the night of his pigmy-self and the day of his god-self,
And that the corner-stone of the temple is not higher than the lowest stone in its foundation.

Kahlil Gibran
And to the flower a bee is a messenger of love,
And to both, bee and flower, the giving and the receiving of pleasure is a need and an ecstasy.

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

Kahlil Gibran
For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun? And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.

Kahlil Gibran
I was dead. I was a woman who had divorced her soul. I was living apart from this self which you now see. I belonged to all men, and to none. They called me harlot, and a woman possessed of seven devils. I was cursed, and I was envied.
But when His dawn-eyes looked into my eyes all the stars of my night faded away, and I became Miriam, only Miriam, a woman lost to the earth she had known, and finding herself in new places.

Kahlil Gibran
For thought is a bird of space, that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly.

Kahlil Gibran
We stood up and bade each other farewell, but love and despair stood between us like two ghosts, one stretching his wings with his fingers over our throats, one weeping and the other laughing hideously. As I took Selma's hand and put it to my lips, she came close to me and placed a kiss on my forehead, then dropped on the wooden bench. She shut her eyes and whispered softly, "Oh, Lord God, have mercy on me and mend my broken wings!

Kahlil Gibran
The astronomer may speak to you of his understanding of space, but he cannot give you his understanding.

Kahlil Gibran
You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days.
Ay, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.
But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

Kahlil Gibran
Strange that creatures without backbones have the hardest shells.

Kahlil Gibran