Quotes by Khalil Gibran

"Art is a step from what is obvious and well-known toward what is arcane and concealed."

"Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love."

"Of life's two chief prizes, beauty and truth, I found the first in a loving heart and the second in a laborer's hand."

"Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror."

"If you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work."

"For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one."

"The most pitiful among men is he who turns his dreams into silver and gold."

"Trust in dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity."

"We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them."

"Faith is a knowledge within the heart, beyond the reach of proof."

"Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother."

"Nor shall derision prove powerful against those who listen to humanity or those who follow in the footsteps of divinity, for they shall live forever. Forever."

"Faith is an oasis in the heart which will never be reached by the caravan of thinking."

"Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity."

"Your friend is your needs answered."

"Love is trembling happiness."

"I wash my hands of those who imagine chattering to be knowledge, silence to be ignorance, and affection to be art."

"A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle."

"Knowledge of the self is the mother of all knowledge. So it is incumbent on me to know my self, to know it completely, to know its minutiae, its characteristics, its subtleties, and its very atoms."

"No man can reveal to you nothing but that which already lies half-asleep in the dawning of your knowledge."

"The person you consider ignorant and insignificant is the one who came from God, that he might learn bliss from grief and knowledge from gloom."

"Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit."

"If your heart is a volcano, how shall you expect flowers to bloom?"

"Love possesses not nor will it be possessed, for love is sufficient unto love."

"Life without liberty is like a body without spirit."

"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."

"And ever has it been known that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation."

"Sadness is but a wall between two gardens."

"When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. 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."

"Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding."

"Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars."

"I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers."

"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."

"Time has been transformed, and we have changed; it has advanced and set us in motion; it has unveiled its face, inspiring us with bewilderment and exhilaration."

"Wisdom stands at the turn in the road and calls upon us publicly, but we consider it false and despise its adherents."