• Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity.
  • Perplexity is the beginning of knowledge.
  • A man can be free without being great, but no man can be great without being free.
  • Rebellion without truth is like spring in a bleak, arid desert.
  • Generosity is giving more than you can, and pride is taking less than you need.
  • Art is a step from what is obvious and well-known toward what is arcane and concealed.
  • The significance of a man is not in what he attains, but rather what he longs to attain.
  • You may forget the one with whom you have laughed, but never the one with whom you have wept.
  • Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.
  • We live only to discover beauty. All else is a form of waiting.
  • It is slavery to live in the mind unless it has become part of the body.
  • He who has not looked on Sorrow will never see Joy.
  • Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.
  • What the soul knows is often unknown to the man who has a soul. We are infinitely more than we think
  • By losing your goal, you have lost your way.
  • There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward.
  • All that spirits desire, spirits attain.
  • Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and the nights.
  • If the other person injures you, you may forget the injury; but if you injure him you will always remember.
  • Zeal is a volcano, the peak of which the grass of indecisiveness does not grow.
  • The highest virtue here may be the least in another world.
  • Life without love is like a tree without blossom and fruit.
  • We are expression of earth, and of life – not separate individuals only.
  • Safeguarding the rights of others is the most noble and beautiful end of a human being.
  • The envious praises me unknowingly.
  • And think not you can guide the course of love. For love, if it finds you worthy, shall guide your course.
  • Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.
  • If indeed you must be candid, be candid beautifully.
  • To be able to look back upon ones life in satisfaction, is to live twice.
  • Strange that we all defend our wrongs with more vigor than we do our rights.
  • What difference does it make, whether you live in a big city or in a community of homes ? The real life is within.
  • Life without liberty is like a body without spirit.
  • If you reveal your secrets to the wind you should not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees.
  • Coming generations will learn equality from poverty, and love from woes.
  • How shall my heart be unsealed unless it be broken.
  • Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing toward what will be.
  • Love and doubt have never been on speaking terms.
  • A true hermit goes to the wilderness to find – not to lose himself.
  • Strange, the desire for certain pleasures is a part of my pain.
  • Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.
  • Half of what I say is meaningless; but I say it so that the other half may reach you.
  • In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.
  • Knowledge cultivates your seeds and does not sow in you seeds.
  • Faith is an oasis in the heart which will never be reached by the caravan of thinking.
  • It is well to give when asked, but it is better to give unasked, through understanding.
  • Yesterday is but today’s memory, tomorrow is today’s dream.
  • Desire is half of life, indifference is half of death.
  • If you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work.
  • One may not reach the dawn save by the path of the night .
  • We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.
  • The optimist sees the rose and not its thorns; the pessimist stares at the thorns, oblivious to the rose.
  • Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
  • In one drop of water are found all the secrets of all the oceans.
  • In the depth of my soul there is a wordless song.
  • Hell is not in torture; Hell is in an empty heart.
  • Love possesses not nor will it be possessed, for love is sufficient unto love.
  • You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
  • Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.
  • You are blind and I am deaf and dumb, so let us touch hands and understand.
  • Faith is a knowledge within the heart, beyond the reach of proof.
  • Say not, ‘I have found the truth,’ but rather, ‘I have found a truth.
  • Lovers embrace that which is between them rather than each other.
  • Knowledge is life with wings.
  • If I accept the sunshine and warmth I must also accept the thunder and lightning.
  • When Life does not find a singer to sing her heart she produces a philosopher to speak her mind.
  • Birth and Death are the two noblest expressions of bravery.
  • What is poetry? An extension of vision – and music is an extension of hearing.
  • The most pitiful among men is he who turns his dreams into silver and gold.
  • The real in us is silent; the acquired is talkative.
  • Trust in dreams, for in them is the hidden gate to eternity.

(by Kahlil Gibran)

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