Kahlil Gibran

Strange that creatures without backbones have the hardest shells.

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.

If you sing of beauty though alone in the heart of the desert you will have an audience.

A truth is to be known always, to be uttered sometimes.

When Life does not find a singer to sing her heart she produces a philosopher to speak her mind.

My loneliness was born when men praised my talkative faults and blamed my silent virtues.

The reality of the other person is not in what he reveals to you, but in what he cannot reveal to you. Therefore, if you would understand him, listen not to what he says but rather to what he does not say.

A sense of humour is a sense of proportion.

For in truth it is life that gives unto life-while you, who deem yourself a giver, are but a witness.

Love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.

Say not, "I have found the path of the soul." Say rather, "I have found the soul walking upon my path." For the soul walks upon all paths. The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed. The soul unfolds itself, like a …

O love, whose lordly hand Has bridled my desires, And raised my hunger and my thirst To dignity and pride, Let not the strong in me and the constant Eat the bread or drink the wine

Always have we been our own forerunners, and always shall we be. And all that we have gathered and shall gather shall be but seeds for fields yet unploughed. We are the fields and the ploughmen, the gatherers and the gathered.

You are your own forerunner, and the towers you have builded are but the foundation of your giant-self. And that self too shall be a foundation.

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.

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

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.

The tears that you spill, the sorrowful, are sweeter than the laughter of snobs and the guffaws of scoffers.

My enemy said to me, "Love your enemy." And I obeyed him and loved myself.

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.

Vain are the beliefs and teachings that make man miserable, and false is the goodness that leads him into sorrow and despair, for it is man's purpose to be happy on this earth and lead the way to felicity and preach its gospel wherever he …

Say not, "I have found the truth," but rather, "I have found a truth." Say not, "I have found the path of the soul." Say rather, "I have met the soul walking upon my path."

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