In this post we’ll delve into the world of Khalil Gibran quotes who was a Lebanese-American poet, philosopher, and artist.
Khalil Gibran was born on January 6, 1883, in Bsharri, a town in the Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate, which was then part of the Ottoman Empire (present-day Lebanon). He came from a Maronite Christian family.
He and his family immigrated to the United States, and settled in Boston. He studied in Paris and returned to the U.S. to pursue a career as an artist and writer. He was a prolific artist and he also produced drawings and paintings.
His most famous work, “The Prophet,” is a collection of poetic essays that cover various aspects of life, including love, marriage, work, and freedom. The book became immensely popular and has been translated into numerous languages.
Let’s read some of the best Khalil Gibran quotes on love, life, friendship and ‘The Prophet’.
Khalil Gibran Quotes
1. “One’s own religion is after all a matter between oneself and one’s Maker and no one else’s.”
2. “And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.”
3. “If you reveal your secrets to the wind, you should not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees.”
4. “The real test of good manners is to be able to put up with bad manners pleasantly.”
5. “Forgetfulness is a form of freedom.”
6. “Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart.”
7. “We are all like the bright moon, we still have our darker side.”
8. “You may forget with whom you laughed, but you will never forget with whom you wept.”
Khalil Gibran Quotes From ‘The Prophet’
1. “To belittle, you have to be little.”
2. “For what is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst?”
3. “You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts.”
4. “The earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.”
5. “Love possesses not nor will it be possessed, for love is sufficient unto love.”
6. “Yesterday is but today’s memory, and tomorrow is today’s dream.”
7. “You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that 8ou truly give.”
9. “Love one another, but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.”
10. “No man can reveal to you nothing but that which already lies half-asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.”
11. “Much of your pain is self-chosen.”
12. “Verily the lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul, and then walks grinning in the funeral.”
13. “Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield, upon your reason and your judgment wage war against your passion and your appetite.”
Khalil Gibran Quotes on Love
1. “If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. And if they don’t, they never were.”
2. “When you love you should not say, “God is in my heart,” but rather, “I am in the heart of God.”
3. “Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit.”
4. “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.”
5. “I love you when you bow in your mosque, kneel in your temple, pray in your church. For you and I are sons of one religion, and it is the spirit.”
6. “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 for years or even generations.”
7. “Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.”
8. “Love is trembling happiness.”
9. “Love and doubt have never been on speaking terms.”
10. “And God said “Love Your Enemy,” and I obeyed him and loved myself.”
11. “It takes a minute to have a crush on someone, an hour to like someone, and a day to love someone… but it takes a lifetime to forget someone.”
Khalil Gibran Quotes on Life
1. “To be able to look back upon ones life in satisfaction, is to live twice.”
2. “Travel and tell no one, live a true love story and tell no one, live happily and tell no one, people ruin beautiful things.”
3. “Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens.”
4. “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.”
5. “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.”
6. “Truth is a deep kindness that teaches us to be content in our everyday life and share with the people the same happiness.”
7. “Life without liberty is like a body without spirit.”
8. “You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care, nor your nights without a want and a grief, but rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked and unbound.”
Khalil Gibran Quotes on Death
1. “For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.”
2. “If my survival caused another to perish, then death would be sweeter and more beloved.”
3. “Death most resembles a prophet who is without honor in his own land or a poet who is a stranger among his people.”
Khalil Gibran Quotes on Children
1. “You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.”
2. “Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They came through you but not from you and though they are with you yet they belong not to you.”
3. “Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.”
Khalil Gibran Quotes on Friendship
1. “Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity.”
2. “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.”
3. “Your friend is your needs answered.”
4. “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?”
5. “Let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.”
6. “In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.”
Khalil Gibran Quotes on Wisdom
1. “If your heart is a volcano, how shall you expect flowers to bloom?”
2. “Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing toward what will be.”
3. “A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle.”
“Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it becomes too proud to weep, too grave to laugh, and too selfish to seek other than itself.”
4. “The eye of a human being is a microscope, which makes the world seem bigger than it really is.”
5. “If the other person injures you, you may forget the injury; but if you injure him you will always remember.”
6. “The lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and then becomes a host, and then a master.”
7. “The most pitiful among men is he who turns his dreams into silver and gold.”
8. “Pain and foolishness lead to great bliss and complete knowledge, for Eternal Wisdom created nothing under the sun in vain.”
9. “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.”
10. “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.”
Khalil Gibran Quotes on Strength
1. “Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.”
2. “Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.”
3. “Tenderness and kindness are not signs of weakness and despair, but manifestations of strength and resolution.”
4. “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.”
5. “There is a space between man’s imagination and man’s attainment that may only be traversed by his longing.”
Inspirational Khalil Gibran Quotes
1. “To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but at what he aspires to.”
2. “Trust in dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.”
3. “Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.”
4. “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.”
5. “I prefer to be a dreamer among the humblest, with visions to be realized, than lord among those without dreams and desires.”
6. “Advance, and never halt, for advancing is perfection. Advance and do not fear the thorns in the path, for they draw only corrupt blood.”
7. “The optimist sees the rose and not its thorns; the pessimist stares at the thorns, oblivious to the rose.”
8. “All that spirits desire, spirits attain.”
Khalil Gibran Quotes on Kindness
1. “The smallest act of kindness is worth more than the greatest intention.”
2. “I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers.”
3. “Generosity is giving more than you can, and pride is taking less than you need.”
4. “Safeguarding the rights of others is the most noble and beautiful end of a human being.”
5. “The just is close to the people’s heart, but the merciful is close to the heart of God.
6. “Generosity is not giving me that which I need more than you do, but it is giving me that which you need more than I do.”
7. “When we turn to one another for counsel we reduce the number of our enemies.”
Khalil Gibran Quotes on Truth
1. “Rebellion without truth is like spring in a bleak, arid desert.”
2. “Say not, ‘I have found the truth,’ but rather, ‘I have found a truth.’”
3. “Exaggeration is truth that has lost its temper.”
4. “Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love.”
5. “We are all prisoners but some of us are in cells with windows and some without.”
Khalil Gibran Quotes on Faith
1. “Faith is a knowledge within the heart, beyond the reach of proof.”
2. “Faith is an oasis in the heart which will never be reached by the caravan of thinking.”
3. “Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.”
4. “Much of your pain is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.”
Khalil Gibran Quotes on Happiness & Joy
1. “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.”
2. “Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.”
3. “You pray in your distress and in your need; would that you might also pray in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance.”
4. “There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward.”
5. “We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.”
6. “Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.”
7. “Sadness is but a wall between two gardens.”
These Khalil Gibran quotes reflect his philosophical and spiritual insights that have resonated with readers around the world, transcending cultural and religious boundaries.
Khalil Gibran passed away on April 10, 1931, in New York City, at the age of 48. Despite his relatively short life, his literary and artistic contributions continue to be celebrated and appreciated.
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