These Kahlil Gibran quotes are all words of wisdom from the Lebanese-American philosophical essayist, novelist, mystical poet and artist.
Gibran Kahlil Gibran was born on 6th January 1883 in the town of Bsharri in Northern Mount Lebanon. Being in a poor family he received no formal schooling, but was taught the Bible and Lebanese Arabic from priests. In June 1895 his mother (Kamila) emigrated with her children to America. On registering at school a mistake was made which changed his name to Kahlil Gibran. At the age of 15 he returned to his homeland to study, returning to Boston in 1902.
His best-known work is The Prophet, published in 1923 the book comprises of twenty six poetic essays. It is one of the best selling books of the twentieth century in the United States. It has also recently been made into a movie.
Kahlil Gibran died in New York on 10th April 1931 and fulfilling his wishes was buried in Lebanon.
quotes are listed alphabetically
Kahlil Gibran Quotes: A
A friend who is far away, is sometimes much nearer than one who is at hand.
A singer cannot delight you with his singing, unless he himself delights to sing.
All things from the lowest to the loftiest, from the smallest to the greatest, exist within you as equals. In one atom are found all the elements of the Earth. One drop of water contains all the secrets of the oceans. In one motion of the mind are found all the motions of all the laws of existence.
And when you crush an apple with your teeth, say to it in your heart: your seeds shall live in my body, and the buds of your tomorrow shall blossom in my heart, and your fragrance shall be my breath, and together we shall rejoice through all the seasons.
And your body is the harp of your Soul, and it is yours to bring forth sweet music from it, or confused sounds.
Art arises when the secret of vision of the artist and the manifestation of nature agree to find new shapes.
Art began when man glorified the sun with a hymn of gratitude.
Art is a step in the known toward the unknown.
As between the Soul and the body there is a bond, so are the body and its environment linked together.
Kahlil Gibran Quotes: B
Beauty is not in the face.
Beauty is a Light in the heart.
Kahlil Gibran Quotes: E
Education sows not seeds in you, but makes your seeds grow.
Enthusiasm is a volcano, on whose top never grows the grass of hesitation.
Ever has it been, that love knows not its own depth, until the hour of separation.
Everything in creation exists within you, and everything in you exists in creation.
Kahlil Gibran Quotes: F
Faith is a knowledge within the heart, beyond the reach of proof.
Faith is an oasis in the heart, which will never be reached by the caravan of thinking.
Faith perceives Truth sooner than Experience can.
For what is it to die? But to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun. and what is it to cease breathing? But to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God, unencumbered.
Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing. And when you have reached the mountain top then you shall begin to climb. And the Earth shall claim your limbs. Then shall you truly dance.
Forget not that the Earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.
Lucy (2015)Kahlil Gibran Quotes: G
Give and take… For the bee a flower is a fountain of life. For 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.
Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping. For only the hand of life can contain your hearts. And stand together yet not too near together. For pillars of the temple stand apart, and the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.
God has created your Spirits with wings to fly in the spacious firmament of Love and Freedom.
God has placed a torch in your hearts that glows with knowledge and beauty.
God has placed in each Soul an apostle to lead us upon the illumined path. Yet many seek life from without, unaware that it is within them.
God made our bodies temples for our Souls, and they should be kept strong and clean, and be worthy of the deity that occupies them.
God made truth with many doors to welcome every believer who knocks on them.
Kahlil Gibran Quotes: H
He who loses his mother loses a pure Soul who blesses and guards him constantly.
He who philosophises is like a mirror that reflects objects that it cannot see, like a cave that returns the echo of voices that it does not hear.
He who stares at the small and near images will have difficulty in seeing and distinguishing those that are great and remote.
Humanity is divinity divided without and united within.
Kahlil Gibran Quotes: I
I know his father; how do you expect me not to know him?
I shall follow the path to wherever my destiny and my mission for truth shall take me.
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.
If the ignorant say to you that the Soul perishes like the body, answer that the flower perishes, but the seeds remain. This is the law of God.
If you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work.
In education the life of the mind proceeds gradually from scientific experiments to intellectual theories, to spiritual feeling, and then to God.
In the depths of your hopes and desires, lies your silent knowledge of the beyond, and like seeds dreaming beneath the snow, your heart dreams of spring. Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.
In the dew of little things, the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.
Inspiration is in seeing a part of the whole with the part of the whole in you.
Kahlil Gibran Quotes: K
Keep me from the wisdom that does not weep, and the philosophy that does not laugh, and the pride that does not bow its head before a child.
Kahlil Gibran Quotes: L
Let there be spaces in your togetherness.
Life and death are one, even as the river and sea are one. In the depths of your hopes and desires lies your silent knowledge of the beyond; and like seeds dreaming beneath the snow, your heart dreams of spring. Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.
Life kisses us on both cheeks, day and morn.
Love is a trembling happiness.
Love… It surrounds every being and extends slowly to embrace all that shall be.
Love knows not its depth till the hour of separation.
Love, like death, changes everything.
Kahlil Gibran Quotes: M
Man’s value is in the few things he creates and not in the many possessions he amasses.
Mother… The most beautiful word on the lips of mankind.
Kahlil Gibran Quotes: O
Oratory is the cunning of the tongue over the ear, but eloquence is the joining of the heart with the Soul.
Our Souls traverse spaces in life which are not measurable by time, that invention of man.
Our worst fault is our preoccupation with the faults of others.
Out of suffering have emerged the strongest Souls. The most massive characters are seared with scars.
Kahlil Gibran Quotes: P
Prayer is the song of the heart that makes its way to the throne of God even when entangled in the wailing of thousands of souls.
Kahlil Gibran Quotes: R
Remembrance is a tripping stone in the path of hope.
Kahlil Gibran Quotes: S
Sayings remain meaningless until they are embodied in habits.
Show me your mother’s face; I will tell you who you are.
Souls are fires whose ashes are the bodies.
Strength and tolerance are partners.
Kahlil Gibran Quotes: T
Tenderness and kindness are not signs of weakness and despair, but manifestations of strength and resolution.
The appearance of things change according to the emotions, and thus we see magic and beauty in them, while the magic and beauty are really in ourselves.
The butterfly will continue to hover over the field and the dewdrops will still glitter upon the grass when the pyramids of Egypt are leveled and the skyscrapers of New York are no more.
The chemist who can extract from his heart’s elements the compassion, respect, longing, patience, regret, surprise, and forgiveness and compound them into one, can create that atom which is called LOVE.
The essence of everything on Earth, seen and unseen, is Spiritual.
The flower that grows above the clouds will never wither. And the song chanted by the lips of the brides of dawn will never vanish.
The hungry savage picks a fruit from the tree and eats it. The hungry citizen in civilized society; buys a fruit from the one who bought it from another, who bought it from him who picked it from the tree.
The light 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 personality.
The millstone may break down, but the river continues its course to the sea.
The most solid stone in the structure is the lowest one in the foundations.
The optimist sees the rose and not it’s thorns; the pessimist stares at the thorns, oblivious to the rose.
The reality of music is in that vibration that remains in the ear after the singer finishes his song and the player no longer plucks the strings.
The secret in singing is found between the vibrations in the singer’s voice and the throb in the hearer’s heart.
The Sultan of Sultans is he who has gained the love of the pauper.
The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom, but rather, leads you to the threshold of your mind.
The tree that contrives to cheat life by living in the shade withers when it is removed and replanted in the sun.
The truth that needs proof is only half true.
There are mysteries within the Soul which no hypothesis can uncover and no guess reveal.
There is no true wealth beyond a man’s need.
There is only one Universal religion whose varied paths are but the fingers of the loving hand of the Supreme Being.
They say if one understands himself, he understands people. But I say to you, when one loves people, he learns something about himself.
To be closer to God, be closer to people.
To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but at what he aspires to do.
Trees are poems the Earth writes upon the sky.
Truth is the will and purpose of God in man.
Kahlil Gibran Quotes: W
We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.
We fear death, yet we long for slumber and beautiful dreams.
When I meditated upon Jesus I always saw him either as an infant in the manger seeing His mother Mary’s face for the first time, or, staring from the crucifix at His mother Mary’s face for the last time.
When I planted my pain in the field of patience, it bore fruit of happiness.
Worship does not require seclusion and solitude.
Kahlil Gibran Quotes: Y
Yesterday is but today’s memory and tomorrow is today’s dream.
You give but little when you give your possessions. It is when you give yourself that you truly give.
You pray in your distress and in your need, would that you might pray also in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance.
You progress not through improving what has been done, but by reaching toward what has yet to be done.
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 the 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 soul, for their soul belongs 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 children as 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 the bow that is stable.
Your confidence in the people, and your doubt about them, are closely related to your self-confidence and your self-doubt.
