Kahlil Gibran Love Quotes and Sayings
Kahlil Gibran Love Quotes, Sayings and Poems
#1 “The Coming of the Ship” in The Prophet, 1923
1. Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.
#2 The Essential Gibran
2. Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit. And love without beauty is like flowers without fragrance, and fruit without seed. Life, Love, and Beauty are three entities in one self, free and boundless, which know neither change nor separation.
#3-4 The Prophet, 1923
3. And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
4. 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.
#5 Beloved Prophet: Love letters of Kahlil Gibran and Mary Haskell and her private journal, 8 June 1924
5. No human relation gives one possession in another—every two souls are absolutely different. In friendship or in love, the two side by side raise hands together to find what one cannot reach alone.
#6-7 A Third Treasury of Kahlil Gibran
6. Darkness may hide the trees and the flowers from the eyes but it cannot hide love from the soul. [S]
7. Love is the only flower that grows and blossoms without the aid of seasons. [S]
#8-10 Sand and Foam
8. Every man loves two women; the one is the creation of his imagination, and the other is not yet born.
9. Love that does not renew itself every day becomes a habit and in turn a slavery.
10. Love which is not always springing is always dying.
#11 The Broken Wings
11. It is wrong to think that love comes from long companionship and persevering courtship. Love is the offspring of spiritual affinity and unless that affinity is created in a moment, it will not be created in years or even generations.
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Excerpt from Wikipedia: Kahlil Gibran (Full Arabic name Gibran Khalil Gibran, sometimes spelled Khalil; Arabic: جبران خليل جبران / ALA-LC: Jubrān Khalīl Jubrān or Jibrān Khalīl Jibrān) (January 6, 1883 – April 10, 1931) was a Lebanese-American artist, poet, and writer of the New York Pen League.
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Sayings by Kahlil Gibran
#1 The Treasured Writings of Kahlil Gibran
1. A friend who is far away is sometimes much nearer than one who is at hand. Is not the mountain far more awe-inspiring and more clearly visible to one passing through the valley than to those who inhabit the mountain?
#2 “On Religion” in The Prophet, 1923
2. Your daily life is your temple and your religion. Whenever you enter into it take with you your all.
#3 Sand And Foam
3. If the other people laughs at you, you can pity him; but if you laugh at him you may never forgive yourself. If the other person injures you, you may forget the injury; but if you injure him you will always remember.
#4 The Prophet & The Garden Of The Prophet
4. 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.
#5 The Prophet
5. 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.
#6 The Prophet
6. You are good when you walk to your goal firmly and with bold steps. Yet you are not evil when you go thither limping. Even those who limp go not backward. But you who are strong and swift, see that you do not limp before the lame, deeming it kindness.
#7 Kahlil Gibran on Time
7. And knows that yesterday is but today’s memory and tomorrow is today’s dream.
#8 A Tear And A Smile & Sand And Foam
8. Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky, We fell them down and turn them into paper, that we may record our emptiness.
#9 Quoted in Wings of Thought
9. Faith is a knowledge within the heart, beyond the reach of proof.
#10 Sand and Foam
10. The obvious is that which is never seen until someone expresses it simply.
#11 The Treasured Writings of Kahlil Gibran
11. One day you will ask me which is more important? My life or yours? I will say mine and you will walk away not knowing that you are my life.
#12 Beloved Prophet: The Love Letters of Kahlil Gibran and Mary Haskell and Her Private Journal, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 1972
12. If I accept the sunshine and warmth I must also accept the thunder and the lightning.
#13 The Treasured Writings of Kahlil Gibran
13. Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart.
#14 Yesterday and Today in Tears and Laughter, Martin L. Wolf, ed., 1947
14. Money is like love; it kills slowly and painfully the one who withholds it, and enlivens the other who turns it on his fellow man.
#15 A Tear And A Smile & Sand And Foam
15. I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers.
#16 Your Thought and Mine
16. Your thought advocates Judaism, Brahmanism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam. In my thought there is only one universal religion, whose varied paths are but the fingers of the loving hand of the Supreme Being. In your thought there are the rich, the poor, and the beggared. My thought holds that there are no riches but life; that we are all beggars, and no benefactor exists save life herself.
#17-19 Sand and Foam
17. 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.
18. We choose our joys and our sorrows long before we experience them.
19. It takes two of us to discover truth: one to utter it and one to understand it.
#20 The Prophet
20. Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.
#21 Become a Conscious Creator: A Return to Self-Empowerment (2007) by Lisa Ford, p. 44
21. To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but what he aspires to.
#22 The Prophet: On eating and drinking
22. 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 to-morrow shall blossom in my heart, And your fragrance shall be my breath, And together we shall rejoice through all the seasons.
#23 “Wisdom and I” in The Voice of the Master, 1963
23. March on. Do not tarry. To go forward is to move toward perfection. March on, and fear not the thorns, or the sharp stones on life’s path.
#24-33 Sand and Foam, 1926
24. Long were you a dream in your mother’s sleep, and then she woke to give you birth.
25. Generosity is giving more than you can, and pride is taking less than you need.
26. The mountain veiled in mist is not a hill; an oak tree in the rain is not a weeping willow.
27. You may forget the one with whom you have laughed, but never the one with whom you have wept.
28. The significance of man is not in what he attains, but rather in what he longs to attain.
29. Half of what I say is meaningless; but I say it so that the other half may reach you.
30. Faith is an oasis in the heart which will never be reached by the caravan of thinking.
31. Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity.
32. They deem me mad because I will not sell my days for gold; and I deem them mad because they think my days have a price.
33. Generosity is not in giving me that which I need more than you do, but it is in giving me that which you need more than I do.
#34 “On Teaching” in The Prophet, 1923
34. No man can reveal to you aught but which already lies half asleep in the dawning of your knowledge. The teacher who walks in the shadow of his 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 to enter the house of his wisdom, but rather lead you to the threshold of your own mind.
#35 A Handful of Sand on the Shore, quoted in Alterquest: the Alternative Quest for Answers (2006) by Karen Fiala, p. 127
35. Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing toward what will be.
#36 A Third Treasury of Kahlil Gibran
36. You may chain my hands, you may shackle my feet; you may even throw me into a dark prison; but you shall not enslave my thinking, because it is free.
#37-39 “On Giving” in The Prophet, 1923
37. It is well to give when asked, but it is better to give unasked, through understanding.
38. There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward.
39. You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.
#40 A Second Treasury of Kahlil Gibran
40. Thus, the appearance of things changes according to the emotions, and thus we see magic and beauty in them, while the magic and beauty are really in ourselves.
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Poems by Kahlil Gibran
Marriage (The Prophet)
You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.
You shall be together when white wings of death scatter your days.
Aye, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.
But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
Love one another but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
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.
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 the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.
Children (The Prophet)
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 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 also the bow that is stable
Love Letters in the Sand
Hearts united in pain and sorrow
will not be separated by joy and happiness.
Bonds that are woven in sadness
are stronger than the ties of joy and pleasure.
Love that is washed by tears
will remain eternally pure and faithful.
ON TALKING (The Prophet)
And then a scholar said, Speak of Talking
And he answered, saying:
You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts;
And when you can no longer dwell in the solitude of your heart you live in your lips, and sound is a diversion and a pastime.
And in much of your talking, thinking is half murdered.
For thought is a bird of space, that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly.
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.
And there are those who talk, and without knowledge or forethought reveal a truth which they themselves do not understand.
And there are those who have the truth within them, but they tell it not in words.
In the bosom of such as these the spirit dwells in rhythmic silence.
When you meet your friend on the roadside or in the market place, let the spirit in you move your lips and direct your tongue.
Let the voice within your voice speak to the ear of his ear;
For his soul will keep the truth of your heart as the taste of the wine is remembered when the colour is forgotten and the vessel is no more.