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June 21 - July 6, 2020
Gibran is the third best-selling poet of all time, behind Shakespeare and Lao-Tzu.
Money! The source of insincere love; the spring of false light and fortune; the well of poisoned water; the desperation of old age!
Feed the lamp with oil and let it not dim, And place it by you, So I can read with tears what your life with me has written upon your face.
One hour devoted to the pursuit of beauty and love is worth a full century of glory given by the frightened weak to the strong.
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 sorrowful spirit finds rest when united with a similar one. They join affectionately, as a stranger is cheered when he sees another stranger in a strange land. Hearts that are united through the medium of sorrow will not be separated by the glory of happiness. Love that is cleansed by tears will remain externally pure and beautiful.
speech is not the only means of understanding between two souls. It is not the syllables that come from the lips and tongues that bring hearts together.
Every beauty and greatness in this world is created by a single thought or emotion inside a man. Everything we see today, made by past generation, was, before its appearance, a thought in the mind of a man or an impulse in the heart of a woman. The revolutions that shed so much blood and turned men’s minds toward liberty were the idea of one man who lived in the midst of thousands of men. The devastating wars which destroyed empires were a thought that existed in the mind of an individual. The supreme teachings that changed the course of humanity were the ideas of a man whose genius separated
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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.
During my youth, Love will be my teacher; in middle age, my help; and in old age, my delight.
Once, high above a pasture, where a sheep and a lamb were grazing, an eagle was circling and gazing hungrily down upon the lamb. And as he was about to descend and seize his prey, another eagle appeared and hovered above the sheep and her young with the same hungry intent. Then the two rivals began to fight, filling the sky with their fierce cries. The sheep looked up and was much astonished. She turned to the lamb and said: “How strange, my child, that these two noble birds should attack one another. Is not the vast sky large enough for both of them? Pray, my little one, pray in your heart
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“Few, aye too few are the featherless who dare the wind, and many are the winged and full-fledged yet in the nest.
Once, as I was burying one of my dead selves, the grave-digger came by and said to me, “Of all those who come here to bury, you alone I like.” Said I, “You please me exceedingly, but why do you like me?” “Because,” said he, “They come weeping and go weeping—you only come laughing and go laughing.”
And ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.
Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts.
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;
You often say, “I would give, but only to the deserving.” The trees in your orchard say not so, nor the flocks in your pasture. They give that they may live, for to withhold is to perish.
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
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.
have you only comfort, and the lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and then becomes a host, and then a master?
And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.
Only then shall you know that the erect and the fallen are but one man standing in twilight between the night of his pigmy-self and the day of his god-self,
For reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction.
And knows that yesterday is but today’s memory and tomorrow is today’s dream.
And let today embrace the past with remembrance and the future with longing.
Go to your fields and your gardens, and you shall learn that it is the pleasure of the bee to gather honey of the flower. But it is also the pleasure of the flower to yield its honey to the bee. For to the bee a flower is a fountain of life, And to the flower a bee is a messenger of love, And to both, bee and flower, the giving and the receiving of pleasure is a need and an ecstasy.
Forgetfulness is a form of freedom.
My house says to me, “Do not leave me, for here dwells your past.” And the road says to me, “Come and follow me, for I am your future.”
There is a space between man’s imagination and man’s attainment that may only be traversed by his longing.
The significance of man is not in what he attains, but rather in what he longs to attain.
When my cup is empty I resign myself to its emptiness; but when it is half full I resent its half-fulness.
Half of what I say is meaningless; but I say it so that the other half may reach you.
Only the dumb envy the talkative.
Every seed is a longing.
Should we all confess our sins to one another we would all laugh at one another for our lack of originality. Should we all reveal our virtues we would also laugh for the same cause.
In truth we talk only to ourselves, but sometimes we talk loud enough that others may hear us.
A disagreement may be the shortest cut between two minds.
I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers.
We choose our joys and our sorrows long before we experience them.
Turtles can tell more about roads than hares.
Strange that creatures without backbones have the hardest shells.
Once every hundred years Jesus of Nazareth meets Jesus of the Christian in a garden among the hills of Lebanon. And they talk long; and each time Jesus of Nazareth goes away saying to Jesus of the Christian, “My friend, I fear we shall never, never agree.”
You may forget the one with whom you have laughed, but never the one with whom you have wept.
