Kahlil Gibran - The Madman (1918)

10 Sourced Quotes

View all Kahlil Gibran Quotes
My God, my aim and my fulfillment; I am thy yesterday and thou are my tomorrow. I am they root in the earth and thou art my flower in the sky, and together we grow before the face of the sun.

Kahlil Gibran
"And now let us play our reeds together."
And they played together.
And their music smote heaven and earth, and a terror struck all living things.
I heard the bellow of beasts and the hunger of the forest. And I heard the cry of lonely men, and the plaint of those who long for what they know not.
I heard the sighing of the maiden for her lover, and the panting of the luckless hunter for his prey.
And then there came peace into their music, and the heavens and the earth sang together.
All this I saw in my dream, and all this I heard.

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
I go — as others already crucified have gone. And think not we are weary of crucifixion. For we must be crucified by larger and yet larger men, between greater earths and greater heavens.

Kahlil Gibran
In a dream I saw Jesus and My God Pan sitting together in the heart of the forest.
They laughed at each other's speech, with the brook that ran near them, and the laughter of Jesus was the merrier. And they conversed long.

Kahlil Gibran
For the first time the sun kissed my own naked face and my soul was inflamed with love for the sun, and I wanted my masks no more. And as if in a trance I cried, "Blessed, blessed are the thieves who stole my masks."
Thus I became a madman.
And I have found both freedom and safety in my madness; the freedom of loneliness and the safety from being understood, for those who understand us enslave something in us.
But let me not be too proud of my safety. Even a Thief in a jail is safe from another thief.

Kahlil Gibran
My friend, I am not what I seem. Seeming is but a garment I wear — a care-woven garment that protects me from thy questionings and thee from my negligence.
The "I" in me, my friend, dwells in the house of silence, and therein it shall remain for ever more, unperceived, unapproachable.
I would not have thee believe in what I say nor trust in what I do — for my words are naught but thy own thoughts in sound and my deeds thy own hopes in action.

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

Kahlil Gibran
Defeat, my defeat, my deathless courage, You and I shall laugh together with the storm, And together we shall dig graves for all that die in us, and we shall stand in the sun with a will, And we shall be dangerous

Kahlil Gibran
Why dispute what we shall be, when we know not even what we are.

Kahlil Gibran