Welcome to our collection of quotes (with shareable picture quotes) by Khalil Gibran. We hope you enjoy pondering them and that you will share them widely.
Wikipedia Summary for Kahlil Gibran
Gibran Khalil Gibran (Arabic: جبران خليل جبران, ALA-LC: Jubrān Khalīl Jubrān, pronounced [ʒʊˈbraːn xaˈliːl ʒʊˈbraːn], or Jibrān Khalīl Jibrān, pronounced [ʒɪˈbraːn xaˈliːl ʒɪˈbraːn]; January 6, 1883 – April 10, 1931), usually referred to in English as Kahlil Gibran (pronounced kah-LEEL ji-BRAHN), was a Lebanese-American writer, poet and visual artist, also considered a philosopher although he himself rejected the title. He is best known as the author of The Prophet, which was first published in the United States in 1923 and has since become one of the best-selling books of all time, having been translated into more than 100 languages.
Born in a village of the Ottoman-ruled Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate to a Maronite family, the young Gibran immigrated with his mother and siblings to the United States in 1895. As his mother worked as a seamstress, he was enrolled at a school in Boston, where his creative abilities were quickly noticed by a teacher who presented him to photographer and publisher F. Holland Day. Gibran was sent back to his native land by his family at the age of fifteen to enroll at the Collège de la Sagesse in Beirut. Returning to Boston upon his youngest sister's death in 1902, he lost his older half-brother and his mother the following year, seemingly relying afterwards on his remaining sister's income from her work at a dressmaker's shop for some time.
In 1904, Gibran's drawings were displayed for the first time at Day's studio in Boston, and his first book in Arabic was published in 1905 in New York City. With the financial help of a newly met benefactress, Mary Haskell, Gibran studied art in Paris from 1908 to 1910. While there, he came in contact with Syrian political thinkers promoting rebellion in the Ottoman Empire after the Young Turk Revolution; some of Gibran's writings, voicing the same ideas as well as anti-clericalism, would eventually be banned by the Ottoman authorities. In 1911, Gibran settled in New York, where his first book in English, The Madman, would be published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1918, with writing of The Prophet or The Earth Gods also underway. His visual artwork was shown at Montross Gallery in 1914, and at the galleries of M. Knoedler & Co. in 1917. He had also been corresponding remarkably with May Ziadeh since 1912. In 1920, Gibran re-founded the Pen League with fellow Mahjari poets. By the time of his death at the age of 48 from cirrhosis and incipient tuberculosis in one lung, he had achieved literary fame on "both sides of the Atlantic Ocean," and The Prophet had already been translated into German and French. His body was transferred to his birth village of Bsharri (in present-day Lebanon), to which he had bequeathed all future royalties on his books, and where a museum dedicated to his works now stands.
As worded by Suheil Bushrui and Joe Jenkins, Gibran's life has been described as one "often caught between Nietzschean rebellion, Blakean pantheism and Sufi mysticism." Gibran discussed different themes in his writings, and explored diverse literary forms. Salma Khadra Jayyusi has called him "the single most important influence on Arabic poetry and literature during the first half of [the twentieth] century," and he is still celebrated as a literary hero in Lebanon. At the same time, "most of Gibran's paintings expressed his personal vision, incorporating spiritual and mythological symbolism," with art critic Alice Raphael recognizing in the painter a classicist, whose work owed "more to the findings of Da Vinci than it [did] to any modern insurgent." His "prodigious body of work" has been described as "an artistic legacy to people of all nations."
Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity.
In one drop of water are found all the secrets of the oceans.
Longer Version:
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.
Work with love, it is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart.
Life without love is like a tree without blossom and fruit.
Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky,
We fell them down and turn them into paper,
That we may record our emptiness.
The best of men is he who blushes when you praise him and remains silent when you defame him.
For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man's hunger.
Sow a seed and the earth will yield you a flower.
Dream your dream to the sky and it will bring you your beloved.
And think not you can direct the course of love, For love, If it finds you worthy, Directs your course.
And let it direct your passion with reason, that your passion may live through its own daily resurrection, and like the phoenix rises above its own ashes.
There are those among you who seek the talkative through fear of being alone. The silence of aloneness reveals to their eyes their naked selves and they would escape.
When you part from your friend, you grieve not;
For that which you love most in him may be
clearer in his absence,
as the mountain to the climber
is clearer from the plain.
Hell is not in torture; Hell is in an empty heart.
Our pain carves out a larger space for love to fill.
In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter and sharing of pleasure. For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.
Marriage is the golden ring in a chain whose beginning is a glance and whose ending is eternity.
The creator gives no heed to the critic unless he becomes a barren inventor.
Yet you shall not deplore having known blindness, nor regret having been deaf. For in that day you shall know the hidden purposes in all things. And you shall bless darkness as you would bless light.
Between the shores of the oceans and the summit of the highest mountain is a secret route that you must absolutely take before being one with the sons of the Earth.
I have never agreed with my other self wholly. The truth of the matter seems to lie between us.
They have exiled me now from their society and I am pleased, because humanity does not exile except the one whose noble spirit rebels against despotism and oppression. He who does not prefer exile to slavery is not free by any measure of freedom.
In every winter's heart there is a quivering spring, and behind the veil of each night there is a shining dawn.
No man can reveal to you nothing but that which already lies half-asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.
Longer Version:
No man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.
The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple, among his followers, gives not of his wisdom but rather of his faith and his lovingness.
If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind.
A truly religious man does not embrace a religion; and he who embraces one has no religion.
Men who do not forgive women their little faults will never enjoy their great virtues.
How can I lose faith in the justice of life, when the dreams of those who sleep upon feathers are not more beautiful than the dreams of those who sleep upon the earth?
For what is prayer but the expansion of your self into the living ether?
For in truth it is life that gives unto life-while you, who deem yourself a giver, are but a witness.
Strange that creatures without backbones have the hardest shells.
And one of the elders of the city, said, speak to us of good and evil.
And he answered:
You are good in countless ways, and you are not evil when you are not good.
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 house shall be not an anchor but a mast
It shall not be a glistening film that covers a wound, but an eyelid that guards the eye.
Your house is your larger body.
Longer Version:
Your house is your larger body. It grows in the sun and sleeps in the stillness of the night; and it is not dreamless. Does not your house dream, and dreaming, leave the city for grove or hilltop?
Desire is half of life, indifference is half of death.
Philosophy began when man ate the produce of the earth and suffered indigestion.
The most solid stone in the structure is the lowest one in the foundation.
The real test of good manners is to be able to put up with bad manners pleasantly.
A bigot is a stone-deaf orator.
Should we all confess our sins to one another we would all laugh at one another for our lack of originality.
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.
Persecution cannot harm him who stands by Truth. Did not Socrates fall proudly a victim in body? Was not Paul stoned for the sake of the Truth? It is our inner selves that hurt us when we disobey it, and it kills us when we betray it.
True love cannot be found where it truly does not exist, Nor can it be hidden where it truly does. Anonymous Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; For love is sufficient unto love.
The lights of stars that were extinguished ages ago still reaches us. So it is with great men who died centuries ago, but still reach us with the radiations of their personalities.
And if you would know God, be not therefore a solver of riddles. Rather look about you and you shall see Him playing with your children.
Longer Version:
And if you would know God, be not therefore a solver of riddles. Rather look about you and you shall see Him playing with your children. And look into space; you shall see Him walking in the cloud, outstretching His arms in the lightning and descending in rain. You shall see Him smiling in flowers, then rising and waving His hands in trees.
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.
The thirst of soul is sweeter than the wine of material things, and the fear of spirit is dearer than the security of the body.
Your confidence in the people, and your doubt about them, are closely related to your self-confidence and your self-doubt.
I learnt silence from the talkative.
Women opened the windows of my eyes and the doors of my spirit. Had it not been for the woman-mother, the woman-sister, and the woman-friend, I would have been sleeping among those who seek the tranquility of the world with their snoring.
Those to whom worshiping is a window, to open but also to shut, have not yet visited the house of their souls whose windows are open from dawn to dawn.
For the vision of one man lends not its wings to another man.
The subtlest beauties in our life are unseen and unheard.
Should you really open your eyes and see, you would behold your image in all images. And should you open your ears and listen, you would hear your own voice in all voices.
Even as the holy and the righteous cannot rise beyond the highest which is in each one of you, so the wicked and the weak cannot fall lower than the lowest which is in you also.
But I say that even as the holy and the righteous cannot rise beyond the highest which is in each one of you,
So the wicked and the weak cannot fall lower than the lowest which is in you also.
That deed which in our guilt we today call weakness, will appear tomorrow as an essential link in the complete chain of Man.
I use hate as a weapon to defend myself; had I been strong, I would never have needed that kind of weapon.
The I in me, my friend, dwells in the house of silence, and therein it shall remain for ever more, unperceived, unapproachable.
The shepherd will deny the diseased lamb in fear of the flock.
Your clothes conceal much of your beauty, yet they hide not the unbeautiful.
Thus with my lips have I denounced you, while my heart, bleeding within me, called you tender names.
Longer Version:
Thus with my lips have I denounced you, while my heart, bleeding within me, called you tender names. It was love lashed by its own self that spoke. It was pride half slain that fluttered in the dust. It was my hunger for your love that raged from the housetop, while my own love, kneeling in silence, prayed your forgiveness.
Why dispute what we shall be, when we know not even what we are.
Extreme torture is mute, and so we sat silent, petrified, like columns of marble buried under the sand of an earthquake. Neither wished to listen to the other because our heart-threads had become weak and even breathing would have broken them.
Wit is often a mask. If you tear it you will find either genius irritated or cleverness juggling.
Saying this, he turned his head toward the window as if he were trying to solve the problems of human existence by concentrating on the beauty of the universe.
Lovers embrace that which is between them rather than each other.
The soul is an embryo in the body of Man, and the day of death is the Day of awakening, for it is the Great era of labour and the rich Hour of creation.
When you were a wandering desire in the mist, I too was there, a wandering desire. Then we sought one another, and out of our eagerness dreams were born. And dreams were time limitless, and dreams were space without measure.
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.
Strange, the desire for certain pleasures is a part of my pain.
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.
He who does not see the angels and devils in the beauty and malice of life will be far removed from knowledge, and his spirit will be empty of affection.
The highest virtue here may be least in another world.
We fear death, yet we long for slumber and beautiful dreams.
A man can be free without being great, but no man can be great without being free.
And some of your elders remember pleasures with regret like wrongs committed in drunkenness. But regret is the beclouding of the mind and not its chastisement. They should remember their pleasures with gratitude, as they would the harvest of a summer.
Love is not without its flaws. The stronger the love, the more it tests you. Compassion and empathy will make true love persist.
Keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life.
There is a desire deep within the soul which drives man from the seen to the unseen, to philosophy and to the divine.
If I extend an empty hand and in retrieving it and finding it still empty, I feel disappointment, that is foolishness; yet if I extend a hand which is full and yet find no one to receive it, then that is hopelessness.
For a love to grow through the test of everyday living, one must respect that zone of privacy where one retires to relate to the inside instead of the outside.
Your joy can fill you only as deeply as your sorrow has carved you.
And when one of you falls down he falls for those behind him, a caution against the stumbling stone. Ay, and he falls for those ahead of him, who though faster and surer of foot, yet removed not the stumbling stone.
You are your own forerunner, and the towers you have builded are but the foundation of your giant-self. And that self too shall be a foundation.
For the criminal who is weak and poor the narrow cell of death awaits; but honor and glory await the rich who conceal their crimes behind their gold and silver and inherited glory.
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.
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.
Your body is the harp of the soul.
Longer Version:
Your body is the harp of your soul and it is yours to bring forth sweet music from it or confused sounds.
Now let us play hide and seek. Should you hide in my heart it would not be difficult to find you. But should you hide behind your own shell, then it would be useless for anyone to seek you.
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.
A word I want to see written on my grave: I am alive like you, and I am standing beside you. Close your eyes and look around, you will see me in front of you.
For what is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst?
Quotes by Kahlil Gibran are featured in:
Happiness Quotes
Change Quotes
Friendship Quotes
Gratitude Quotes
Hope Quotes
Humility Quotes
Inspirational Quotes
Justice Quotes
Life Quotes
Nature Quotes
Relationship Quotes
Silence Quotes
Simplicity Quotes
Flower Quotes
Words Of Wisdom Quotes
Wisdom Quotes
Love Quotes
Nirvana Quotes
You Yourself Quotes
Self-Discovery Quotes
Writing Quotes
Short Love Quotes
Programming Quotes