Khalil Gibran Self Quotations

Knowledge of the self is the mother of all knowledge. So it is incumbent on me to know my self, to know it completely, to know its minutiae, its characteristics, its subtleties, and its very atoms.

Much of your pain is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.

I have never agreed with my other self wholly. The truth of the matter seems to lie between us.

Your confidence in the people, and your doubt about them, are closely related to your self-confidence and your self-doubt.

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self. Therefore, trust the physician and drink his remedy in silence and tranquility.

Much of your pain is self-chosen.

Seek not the depths of your knowledge with staff or sounding line. For self is a sea boundless and measureless.

There is within me a friend who consoles me every time that troubles overwhelm me and misfortunes afflict me. The man who does not feel friendship towards himself is a public enemy, and he who finds no confidant within himself will die of despair. For life streams out of man's inner self and in no way from what surrounds him.

Remember that Divinity is the true self of Man. It cannot be sold for gold; neither can it be heaped up as are the riches of the world today. The rich man has cast off his Divinity, and has clung to his gold. And the young today have forsaken their Divinity and pursue self-indulgence and pleasure.

Thus with my lips have I denounced you, while my heart, bleeding within me, called you tender names. It was love lashed by its own self that spoke. It was pride half slain that fluttered in the dust. It was my hunger for your love that raged from the housetop, while my own love, kneeling in silence, prayed your forgiveness.

Your saying 'I do not understand you' is praise beyond my worth, and an insult you do not deserve.

For what is prayer but the expansion of your self into the living ether?

Our God, who art our winged self, it is thy will in us that willeth. It is thy desire in us that desireth. It is thy urge in us that would turn our nights, which are thine, into days which are thine also. We cannot ask thee for aught, for thou knowest our needs before they are born in us: Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all.

Often times I have hated in self-defense; if I were stronger I would not have used such a weapon.

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.