Quotes from Khalil Gibran

Perplexity is the beginning of knowledge.

Where can I find a man governed by reason instead of habits and urges?

That deed which in our guilt we today call weakness, will appear tomorrow as an essential link in the complete chain of Man.

What the soul knows is often unknown to the man who has a soul. We are infinitely more than we think.

For the vision of one man lends not its wings to another man.

You cannot lay remorse upon the innocent nor lift it from the heart of the guilty. Unbidden shall it call in the night, that men may wake and gaze upon themselves.

Perhaps a man may commit suicide in self-defense.

Men would bless you or curse you; The curse, a protest against failure, The blessing, a hymn of the hunter Who comes back from the hills With provision for his mate.

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.

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.

Mother: the most beautiful word on the lips of mankind.

Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.

No lower can a man descend than to interpret his dreams into gold and silver.

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.

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

Nature reaches out to us with welcoming arms, and bids us enjoy her beauty; but we dread her silence and rush into the crowded cities, there to huddle like sheep fleeing from a ferocious wolf.

Give and Take... For to the bee a flower is a fountain if life And to the flower a bee is a messenger of love And to both, bee and flower, the giving and the receiving is a need and an ecstasy.

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

You may strive to be like them but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

For life goes not backward, nor tarries with yesterday.

The love of a parent for a child is the love that should grow towards separation.

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

Where are you now, my beloved? Do you hear my weeping From beyond the ocean? Do you understand my need? Do you know the greatness of my patience?

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