Khalil Gibran Quotations | Page 3

To know the pain of too much tenderness

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.

Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield, upon your reason and your judgment wage war against your passion and your appetite.

What is fear of need but need itself?

Tortoises can tell you more about the road than hares.

You may give them your love, but not your thoughts. For they have their own thoughts.

Let your home be you mast and not your anchor.

The strong grows in solitude where the weak withers away.

Life is but a sleep disturbed by dreaming, prompted by the will; the saddened soul with sadness hides it's secrets, and the gay, with thrill.

Let there be spaces in your togetherness...just as strings of a lute dance alone though they quiver with the same music.

When a man's hand touches the hand of a woman, they both touch the heart of eternity.

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.

You hate Jesus because someone from the North Country said He was the Son of God. But you hate one another because each of you deems himself too great to be the brother of the next man.

Am I less man because I believe in a greater man?

Even while the Earth sleeps we travel.

Wailing and lamentation befit those who stand before the throne of life and depart without leaving in its hands a drop of the sweat of their brows or the blood of their hearts.

That which seems most feeble and bewildered in you is the strongest and most determined. Is it not your breath that has erected and hardened the structure of your bones?

It was in my heart to help a little because I was helped much.

A sense of humour is a sense of proportion.

Behind the veil of each night, there is a smilling dawn.

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

Only those beneath me can envy or hate me. I have never been envied nor hated; I am above no one. Only those above me can praise or belittle me. I have never been praised nor belittled; I am below no one.

One day you will ask me which is more important? My life or yours? I will say mine and you will walk away not knowing that you are my life.

If I could take your troubles I would toss them into the sea, But all these things I'm finding Are impossible for me. I cannot build a mountain Or catch a rainbow fair, But let me be what I know best, A friend that is always there.

That deepest thing, that recognition, that knowledge, that sense of kinship began the first time I saw you,and it is the same now - only a thousand times deeper and tenderer. I shall love you to eternity. I loved you long before we met in this flesh. I knew that when I first saw you. It was destiny. We are together like this and nothing can shake us apart.

Jesus was not sent here to teach the people to build magnificent churches and temples amidst the cold wretched huts and dismal hovels. He came to make the human heart a temple, and the soul an altar, and the mind a priest.

The best of man is he who blushes when you praise him and remains silent when you defame him.

If I accept the sunshine and warmth, then I must also accept the thunder and lightning.

And God said, Love your enemy, & I obeyed Him & loved myself.

The nearest to my heart are a king without a kingdom and a poor man who does not know how to beg.

But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires: To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To know the pain of too much tenderness. To be wounded by your own understanding of love; And to bleed willingly and joyfully. To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving; To rest at noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy; To return home at eventide with gratitude; And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise on your lips.

How beautiful to find a heart that loves you, without asking you for anything, but to be okay.

You may forget with whom you laughed, but you will never forget with whom you wept.

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

Our anxiety does not come from thinking about the future, but from wanting to control it.

The universe is my country and the human family is my tribe.

Music is the language of the spirit. It opens the secret of life bringing peace, abolishing strife.

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.

It takes a minute to have a crush on someone, an hour to like someone, and a day to love someone... but it takes a lifetime to forget someone.

God made the world with a heart full of love, Then He looked down from Heaven above, And saw that we all need a helping hand, Someone to share with, who'll understand. He made special people to see us through The glad times and the sad times, too; A person on whom we can always depend, Someone we can call a friend. God made friends so we'll carry a part Of His perfect love in all our hearts.

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.

Marriage is the union of two divinities that a third might be born on earth. It is the union of two souls in a strong love for the abolishment of separateness. It is that higher unity which fuses the separate unities within the two spirits. It is the golden ring in a chain whose beginning is a glance, and whose ending is Eternity. It is the pure rain that falls from an unblemished sky to fructify and bless the fields of divine Nature.

When I planted my pain in the field of patience it bore fruit of happiness.

Keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life.

Between what is said and not meant, and what is meant and not said, most of love is lost.

I do not want you to hear that I LOVE you, but I want you to feel it without me having to say.

It is wrong to think that love comes from long companionship and persevering courtship. Love is the offspring of spiritual affinity and unless that affinity is created in a moment, it will not be created for years or even generations.

When you reach the heart of life you shall find beauty in all things, even in the eyes that are blind to beauty.

Tears have cleansed my eyes, and errors have taught me the language of the hearts.

In one drop of water are found all the secrets of all the oceans; in one aspect of You are found all the aspects of existence.

How distant I am from people when I am with them, and how close when they are far away.

A man's true wealth is the good he does in the world.

And now you ask in your heart, ‘How shall we distinguish that which is good in pleasure from that which is not good?’ Go to your fields and your gardens, and you shall learn that it is the pleasure of the bee to gather honey of the flower, But it is also the pleasure of the flower to yield its honey to the bee. For to the bee a flower is a fountain of life, 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. * People of Orphalese, be in your pleasures like the flowers and the bees.

Work is love made visible.

They deem me mad because I will not sell my days for gold; and I deem them mad because they think my days have a price.

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

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.

To belittle, you have to be little.

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

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

When you reach the end of what you should know, you will be at the beginning of what you should sense.

Hell is not in torture; Hell is in an empty heart..

Be like the flower, turn your faces to the sun.

Said one oyster to a neighboring oyster, "I have a very great pain within me. It is heavy and round and I am in distress." And the other oyster replied with haughty complacence, "Praise be to the heavens and to the sea, I have no pain within me. I am well and whole both within and without." At that moment a crab was passing by and heard the two oysters, and he said to the one who was well and whole both within and without, "Yes, you are well and whole; but the pain that your neighbor bears is a pearl of exceeding beauty."

Man struggles to find life outside himself, unaware that the life he is seeking is within him.

Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.

The tiny flame that lights up the human heart is like a blazing torch that comes down from heaven to light up the paths of mankind. For in one soul are contained the hopes and feelings of all Mankind.

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

You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care, nor your nights without a want and a grief, but rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked and unbound.

Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart.

I have pondered long, and I know now that only the pure of heart forgive the thirst that leads to dead waters. And only the sure of foot can give a hand to him who stumbles.

I AM IGNORANT of absolute truth. But I am humble before my ignorance and therein lies my honor and my reward.

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the same well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears. And how else can it be? The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven? And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?

The lust for comfort kills the passions of the soul.

Let me, O let me bathe my soul in colours; let me swallow the sunset and drink the rainbow.

From a sensitive woman's heart springs the happiness of mankind, and from the kindness of her noble spirit comes mankind's affection.

The bird has an honor that man does not have. Man lives in the traps of his abdicated laws and traditions; but the birds live according to the natural law of God who causes the earth to turn around the sun.

Your friend is your needs answered.

joy and sorrow are inseparable. . . together they come and when one sits alone with you . . remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

I would not exchange the laughter of my heart for the fortunes of the multitudes.

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.

God listens not to your words save when He Himself utters them through your lips.

He who does not see the kingdom of heaven in this life will never see it in the coming life.

Spare me the political events and power struggles, as the whole earth is my homeland and all men are my fellow countrymen.

There is a desire deep within the soul which drives man from the seen to the unseen, to philosophy and to the divine.

Wisdom is not in words; Wisdom is meaning within words.

You see but your shadow when you turn your back to the sun.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

Let passion fill your sails, but let reason be your rudder.

Trees are poems that the earth writes upon the sky.

Truth is like the stars; it does not appear except from behind obscurity of the night. Truth is like all beautiful things in the world; it does not disclose its desirability except to those who first feel the influence of falsehood. Truth is a deep kindness that teaches us to be content in our everyday life and share with the people the same happiness.

In the depths of your hopes and desires, lies your silent knowledge of the beyond, and like seeds dreaming beneath the snow, your heart dreams of spring. Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.

The first glance from the eyes of the beloved is like the spirit that moved upon the face of the waters, giving birth to heaven and earth.

You often say, "I would give, but only to the deserving." The trees in your orchard say not so, nor the flocks in your pasture. They give that they may live, for to withhold is to perish.

Your joy can fill you only as deeply as your sorrow has carved you.

Tenderness and kindness are not signs of weakness and despair, but manifestations of strength and resolution.

I am one of those who believe that spiritual progress is a rule of human life, but the approach to perfection is slow and painful. If a woman elevates herself in one respect and is retarded in another, it is because the rough trail that leads to the mountain peak is not free of ambushes of thieves and lairs of wolves.

We are all prisoners but some of us are in cells with windows and some without.

Love that does not renew itself every day becomes a habit and in turn a slavery.