Khalil Gibran

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

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

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

“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.”

“The creator gives no heed to the critic unless he becomes a barren inventor.”

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

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

“Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing toward what will be.”

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

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

“To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but what he aspires to.”

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

“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.”

“Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself. Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; For love is sufficient unto love.”

“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 lotus of countless petals.”

“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.”

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

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

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

“A sense of humour is a sense of proportion.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Strange that creatures without backbones have the hardest shells.”

“Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity.”

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

“I would be the least among men with dreams and the desire to fulfill them, rather than the greatest with no dreams and no desires.”

“"My face and your faces shall not be masked; our hand shall hold neither sword nor sceptre, and our subjects shall love us in peace and shall not be in fear of us." Thus spoke Jesus, and unto all the kingdoms of the earth I was blinded, and unto all the cities of walls and towers; and it was in my heart to follow the Master to His kingdom.”

“In truth we gaze but do not see, and hearken but do not hear; we eat and drink but do not taste. And there lies the difference between Jesus of Nazareth and ourselves. His senses were all continually made new, and the world to Him was always a new world.”

“Do you not remember me, Nicodemus, who believed in naught but the laws and decrees and was in continual subjection to observances? And behold me now, a man who walks with life and laughs with the sun from the first moment it smiles upon the mountain until it yields itself to bed behind the hills.”

“He was gentle, like a man mindful of his own strength. In my dreams I beheld the kings of the earth standing in awe in His presence.”