Kahlil Gibran Quotes

Your clothes conceal much of your beauty, yet they hide not the unbeautiful.

~ Kahlil Gibran

True beauty is a rayThat springs from the sacred depths of the soul,and illuminates the body, just as lifesprings from the kernel of a stone andgives colour and scent to a flower.

~ Kahlil Gibran

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

~ Kahlil Gibran

Beauty is not a need but an ecstasy.It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth,But rather a heart inflamed and a soul enchanted.It is not the image you would see nor the song you would hear,But rather an image you see though you close your eyes and a song you hear though you shut your ears.It is not the sap within the furrowed bark, nor a win attached to a claw,But rather a garden forever in bloom and a flock of angels forever in flight.Beauty is life when life unveils her holy face. But you are life and you are the veil.Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in the mirror.But you are eternity and you are the mirror.

~ Kahlil Gibran

Beauty is life when life unveils her holy face. But you are life and you are the veil. Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror. But you are eternity and you are the mirror.

~ Kahlil Gibran

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

~ Kahlil Gibran

Seven times have I despised my soul: The sixth time when she despised the ugliness of a face, and knew not that it was one of her own masks.

~ Kahlil Gibran

Oftentimes in denying yourself pleasure you do but store the desire in the recesses of your being.Who knows but that which seems omitted today, waits for tomorrow?Even your body knows its heritage and its rightful need and will not be deceived.And your body is the harp of your soul,And it is yours to bring forth sweet music from it or confused sounds.

~ Kahlil Gibran

Speak not of peoples and laws andKingdoms, for the whole earth isMy birthplace and all humans areMy brothers.

~ Kahlil Gibran

When you work you fulfill a part of earth's furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream was born,And what is it to work with love?It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house.It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit.It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit.Work is love made visible

~ Kahlil Gibran

Then a ploughman said , speak to us of work : in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life ,And to love life throught labour is to be intimate with inmost secrets .And what is it to work with love ?it is to weave the colth with threads from your heart , even as if your beloved were to wear that colth .It is to build a house with affection , even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house .It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy , even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit .It is to change all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit .He who works in marble , and finds the shape of his own soul in the stone , is nobler than he who ploughs the soil.

~ Kahlil Gibran

For the sight of the angry weather saddens my soul and the sight of the town, sitting like a bereaved mother beneath layers of ice, oppresses my heart.

~ Kahlil Gibran

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.Much of your pain is self-chosen.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 tranquillity:For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen,And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has moistened with His own sacred tears.

~ Kahlil Gibran

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

~ Kahlil Gibran

He suffered much, but he understood the mystery of pain: he knew that tears make all things shine.

~ Kahlil Gibran

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.

~ Kahlil Gibran

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 potters oven?And is not the lute that soothes your spirits the very wood that was hollowed with knives?

~ Kahlil Gibran

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

~ Kahlil Gibran

As the strings of a lute are apart though they quiver the same music.

~ Kahlil Gibran

Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone.Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

~ Kahlil Gibran

Solitude has soft, silky hands, but with strong fingers it grasps the heart and makes it ache with sorrow.

~ Kahlil Gibran

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

~ Kahlil Gibran

If your heart is a volcano, how shall you expect flowers to bloom?

~ Kahlil Gibran

Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and nights.

~ Kahlil Gibran

A voice cannot carry the tongue and the lips that gave it wings. Alone must it seek the ether. And alone and without his nest shall the eagle fly across the sun.

~ Kahlil Gibran

Beauty is a thing of might and dread.Like the tempest she shakes the earth beneath us and the sky above us.

~ Kahlil Gibran

Let there be no scales to weigh your un-known treasure,And seek not the depths of your knowledge with staff or sounding line.For self is a sea boundless and measureless.

~ Kahlil Gibran

Suffer not yet our eyes to hunger for your face.

~ Kahlil Gibran

Believing is a fine thing, but putting those beliefs into execution is a test of strength.

~ Kahlil Gibran

Your reason and your passion are the rudder and the sails of your seafaring soul.For reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction.Therefore let your soul exalt your reason to the height of passion, that it may sing;And let it direct your passion with reason, that your passion may livethrough its own daily resurrection, and like the phoenix rise above its own ashes.And since you are a breath in God’s sphere, and a leaf in God’s forest, you too should rest in reason and move in passion.

~ Kahlil Gibran

Reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction.

~ Kahlil Gibran

When love beckons to you, follow him,Though his ways are hard and steep.And when his wings enfold you yield to him,Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.And when he speaks to you believe in him,Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.

~ Kahlil Gibran

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?When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

~ Kahlil Gibran

Accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.

~ Kahlil Gibran

In your winter you deny your spring

~ Kahlil Gibran

Some of you say, 'Joy is greater thar sorrow,' and others say, 'Nay, sorrow is the greater.'But I say unto you, they are inseparable.Together they come, and when one sits, alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

~ Kahlil Gibran

Your children are not your children.They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.They come through you but not from you,And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.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.You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.You are the bows from which your childrenas living arrows are sent forth.The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

~ Kahlil Gibran

You may give them your love but not your thougts, 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.

~ Kahlil Gibran

Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

~ Kahlil Gibran

Your children are not your children.They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.They come through you but not from you,And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.You might give them your love but not your thoughts,For they have their own thoughts.

~ Kahlil Gibran