Kahlil Gibran

A man can be free without being great, but no man can be great without being free.
(Kahlil Gibran’s letter May 16, 1913.)

"With you, Mary," he said today, "I want to be just like a blade of grass, that moves as the air moves it -to talk just according to the impulse of the moment. And I do."
(Kahlil Gibran from Mary Haskell’s Journal January 10, 1914.)

Sometimes you have not even begun to speak - and I am at the end of what you are saying.
(Kahlil Gibran from Mary Haskell’s Journal. July 28, 1917.)

You have helped me in my work and in myself. And I have helped you in your work and in yourself. And I am grateful to heaven for this you-and-me.
(Kahlil Gibran from Mary Haskell’s Journal. March 12, 1922.)

Demonstration of love are small, compared with the great thing that is back of them.
(Kahlil Gibran from Mary Haskell’s Journal. April, 28, 1922.)

I care about your happiness just as you care about mine. I could not be at peace if you were not.
(Kahlil Gibran from his dairy 23rd April 1923)

What-to-Love is a fundamental human problem. And if we have this solution - Love what may Be- we see that this is the way Reality loves - and that there is no other loving that lasts or understands.
(Mary Haskell’s Letter. February 2, 1915.)

I am so happy in your happiness. To you happiness is a form of freedom, and of all the people I know you should be the freest. Surely you have earned this happiness and this freedom. Life cannot be but kind and sweet to you. You have been so sweet and kind to life.
(Kahlil Gibran’s letter. January 24, 1923.)

When I am a stranger in a large city I like to sleep in different rooms, eat in different places, walk through unknown streets, and watch the unknown people who pass. I love to be the solitary traveler !
(From Kahlil Gibran’s Letter. May 16, 1911.)

I want to do a great deal of walking in the open country. Just think, Mary, of being caught by thunder storms! Is there a sight more wonderful than that of seeing the elements producing life through pure motion ?
(From Kahlil Gibran’s Letter. May 24, 1914.)

What the soul knows is often unknown to the man who has a soul. We are infinitely more than we think.
(Kahlil Gibran’s Letter. October 6, 1915.)

Marriage doesn’t give one any rights in another person except such rights that a person gives -
nor any freedom except the freedom which that person gives.
(Kahlil Gibran from Mary Haskell’s Journal. May 27, 1923.)

Among intelligent people the surest basis for marriage is friendship - the sharing of real interests-
the ability to fight out ideas together and understand each other’s thoughts and dreams.
(Kahlil Gibran from Mary Haskell’s Journal. May 26, 1923.)

What difference does it make, whether you live in a big city or in a community of homes ?
The real life is within.
(Kahlil Gibran from Mary Haskell’s Journal. May 27, 1923.)

But now I can put myself in your hands. You can put yourself in another person’s hands when he knows
what you are doing and as respect for it and loves it. He gives you your freedom.
(Mary Haskell’s Journal. June 20, 1914.)

Mary, what is there in a storm that moves me so ? Why am I so much better and stronger and more certain of life when a storm is passing ? I do not know, and yet I love a storm more, far more, than anything in nature.
(Kahlil Gibran’s letter August 14, 1912.)

I often picture myself living on a mountain top, in the most stormy country (not the coldest) in the world. Is there such a place ? If there is I shall go to it someday and turn my heart into pictures and poems.
(Kahlil Gibran’s letter March 1, 1914.)

Imagination sees the complete reality, - it is where past, present and future meet... Imagination is limited neither to the reality which is apparent - nor to one place. It lives everywhere. It is at a centre and feels the vibrations of all the circles within which
east and west are virtually included. Imagination is the life of mental freedom. It realizes what everything is in its many aspects ... Imagination does not uplift: we don’t want to be uplifted, we want to be more completely aware.
(Kahlil Gibran from Mary Haskell’s Journal. June 7, 1912.)

What is poetry ? "An extension of vision - and music is an extension of hearing."
(Kahlil Gibran from Mary Haskell’s Journal. June 20, 1914.)

When the hand of Life is heavy and night songless, it is the time for love and trust. And how light the hand life becomes and how songful the night, when one is loving and trusting all.
(From Kahlil Gibran’s letter December 19, 1916.)

A true hermit goes to the wilderness to find - not to lose himself.
(Kahlil Gibran’s letter October 8, 1913.)

If I accept the sunshine and warmth I must also accept the thunder and lightning.
(Kahlil Gibran from Mary Haskell’s Journal. March 12, 1922.)

If I can open a new corner in a man’s own heart to him I have not lived in vain. Life itself is the thing, not joy or pain or happiness or unhappiness. To hate is as good as to love - an enemy may be as good as a friend. Live for yourseld - live your life. Then you are most truly the friend of man. - I am different every day - and when I am eighty, I shall still be experimenting and changing. Work that I have done no longer concerns me - it is past. I have too much on hand in life itself.
(Kahlil Gibran from Mary Haskell’s Journal. December 25, 1912.)

I realized that all the trouble I ever had about you came from some smallness or fear in myself.
(From Mary Haskell’s Journal. June 12, 1912.)

Follow your heart. Your heart is the right guide in everything big. Mine is so limited.
What you want to do is determined by that divine element that is in each of us.
(Kahlil Gibran from Mary Haskell’s Journal. March 12, 1922.)

The relation between you and me is the most beautiful thing in my life.
It is the most wonderful thing that I have known in any life. It is eternal.
(Kahlil Gibran from Mary Haskell’s Journal. September 11, 1922.)

An expression of that sacred desire to find this world and behold it naked; and that is the soul of the poetry of Life.
Poets are not merely those who write poetry, but those whose hearts are full of the spirit of life.
(Kahlil Gibran’s letter July 17, 1915.)

The professors in the academy say, "Do not make the model more beautiful than she is," and my soul whispers,
"O if you could only paint the model as beautiful as she really is."
(Kahlil Gibran’s letter November 8, 1908.)

That deepest thing, that recognition, that knowledge, that sense of kinship began the first time I saw you, and it is the same now - only a thousand times deeper and tenderer. I shall love you to eternity. I loved you long before we met in this flesh. I knew that when I first saw you. It was destiny. We are together like this and nothing can shake us apart.
(Kahlil Gibran from Mary Haskell’s Journal March 12, 1922.)

Each and every one of us, dear Mary, must have a resting place somewhere.
The resting place of my soul is a beautiful grove where my knowledge of you lives.
(Kahlil Gibran’s letter November 8, 1908.)

We are expression of earth, and of life - not separate individuals only. We cannot get enough away from the earth to see the earth and ourselves as separates. We move with its great movements and our growth is part of its great growth.
(Kahlil Gibran from Mary Haskell’s Journal May 5, 1922.)

The trees were budding, the birds were singing - the grass was wet - the whole earth was shining. And suddenly I was the trees and the flowers and the birds and the grass - and there was no I at all.
(Kahlil Gibran from Mary Haskell’s Journal May 23, 1924.)

Let me, O let me bathe my soul in colours; let me swallow the sunset and drink the rainbow.
(Kahlil Gibran’s letter November 8, 1908.)

The most wonderful thing, Mary, is that you and I are always walking together, hand in hand, in a strangely beautiful world, unknown to other people. We both stretch one hand to receive from Life - and Life is generous indeed.
(Kahlil Gibran’s letter October, 22, 1912.)

His love is as restful as Nature itself. He has no standard for you to conform to, no choice about you, but is simply with your reality, just as Nature is. You are real, so is he: the two realities love each other - voila !
(From Mary Haskell’s Journal December 29, 1912.)

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.
(Kahlil Gibran from Mary Haskell’s Journal June 8, 1924.)

I want to be alive To all the life that is in me now, to know each moment to the uttermost.
(Kahlil Gibran from Mary Haskell’s Journal June 7, 1912.)

You listen to so much more than I can say. You hear consciousness.
You go with me where the words I say can’t carry you.
(Kahlil Gibran from Mary Haskell’s Journal June 5, 1924.)

KAHLIL GIBRAN QUOTES

"When love beckons to you, follow him, Though his ways are hard and steep."
 -Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

"But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:

 To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.

 To know the pain of too much tenderness.

 To be wounded by your own understanding of love;

 And to bleed willingly and joyfully." -Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

"You give but little when you give of your possessions.

 It is when you give of yourself that you truly give."

               -Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

"It is well to give when asked, but it is better to give unasked,

 through understanding;  And to the open-handed the search for one

 who shall receive is joy greater than giving." -Kahlil Gibran

"If you sing though as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle

 man's ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night."

                       -Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

"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."

                       -Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

"Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield, upon which your reason and

 your judgment wage war against passion and your appetite.

 Would that I could be the peacemaker in your soul, that I might turn

 the discord and the rivalry of your elements into oneness and melody."

                       -Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

"Much of your pain is self-chosen.

 It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals

 your sick self." -Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

"Say not, 'I have found the truth,' but rather, 'I have found a truth.'

 Say not, 'I have found the path of the soul.' Say rather, 'I have met

 the soul walking upon my path.'" -Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

"The musician may sing to you of the rhythm which is in all space,

 but he cannot give you the ear which arrests the rhythm nor the

 voice that echoes it." -Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

"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."

               -Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

"[Beauty] is not the image you would see nor the song you would hear,

 But rather an image you see though you close your eyes and a song

 you hear though you shut your ears." -Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

"You have been told that, even like a chain, you are as weak as your

 weakest link.  This is but half the truth. You are also as strong as

 your strongest link." -Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

"Live for yourself- live your life. Then you are most truly the friend

 of man." -Kahlil Gibran

"You may forget the one with whom you have laughed, but never the one

 with whom you have wept." -Kahlil Gibran

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Last updated: 08/15/08