Khalil Gibran Spirit Quotations

Spiritual awakening is the most essential thing in man's life, and it is the sole purpose of being. Is not civilization, in all its tragic forms, a supreme motive for spiritual awakening?

You would measure time the measureless and the immeasurable. You would adjust your conduct and even direct the course of your spirit according to hours and seasons. Of time you would make a stream upon whose bank you would sit and watch its flowing.

Your reason and your passion are your rudder and sails of your seafaring soul, if either your sails or your rudder be broken, you can but toss and drift, or else be held at a standstill in mid-seas. For reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction.

They say: 'If a man knew himself, he would know all mankind.' I say: 'If a man loved mankind, he would know something of himself.

When life does not find a singer to sing her heart she produces a philosopher to speak her mind.

We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way, begin no day where we have ended another, and no sunrise finds us where left by sunset. Even while the earth sleeps we travel. We are the seeds of that tenacious plant, and it is in our ripeness and our fullness of heart that we are given to the wind to be scattered.

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.' For the soul walks upon all paths. The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed. The soul unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals.

For truth and the spirit will abide with the morrow.

You cannot laugh and be unkind at the same time

Words are timeless. You should utter them or write them with a knowledge of their timelessness.

Tell your secret to the wind, but don't blame it for telling the trees.

Love descends upon our souls by the will of God and not by the demand or the plea of the individual.

For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons, and to step out of life’s procession that marches in majesty and proud submission towards the infinite.

Real beauty lies in the spiritual accord that is called love which can exist between a man and a woman....

The truly good is he who is one with all those who are deemed bad.

Many are the places of worship, but few indeed are those who worship in Spirit and in truth.

For what is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst?

I have found both freedom and safety in my madness; the freedom of loneliness and the safety from being understood, for those who understand us enslave something in us.

Solitude has soft, silky hands, but with strong fingers it grasps the heart and makes it ache with sorrow.

Is not the beautiful moon, that inspires poets, the same moon which angers the silence of the sea with a terrible roar?

All that spirits desire, spirits attain.

Love... it surrounds every being and extends slowly to embrace all that shall be.

For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun? And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.

Do not fear the thorns in your path, for they draw only corrupt blood.

Say not, I have found the path of the soul Say rather, I have met the soul walking upon my path.

Your clothes conceal much of your beauty, yet they hide not the unbeautiful.

We are all like the bright moon, we still have our darker side.

A hermit is one who renounces the world of fragments that he may enjoy the world wholly and without interruption.

He who seeks ecstasy in love should not complain of suffering.

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. To measure you by your smallest deed is to reckon the power of ocean by the frailty of its foam. To judge you by your failures is to cast blame upon the seasons for their inconstancy.

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.

And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit. For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable is caught.

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.

Only yesterday I was no different than them, yet I was saved. I am explaining to you the way of life of a people who say every sort of wicked thing about me because I sacrificed their friendship to gain my own soul. I left the dark paths of their duplicity and turned my eyes toward the light where there is salvation, truth, and justice. They have exiled me now from their society, yet I am content. Mankind only exiles the one whose large spirit rebels against injustice and tyranny. He who does not prefer exile to servility is not free in the true and necessary sense of freedom.

My loneliness was born when men praised my talkative faults and blamed my silent virtues.

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding... And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy

If you reveal your secrets to the wind, you should not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees.

Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky, We fell them down and turn them into paper, That we may record our emptiness.

There are those who give and know not pain in giving, nor do they seek joy, nor give with mindfulness of virtue; They give as in yonder valley the myrtle breathes its fragrance into space.

The optimist sees the rose and not its thorns; the pessimist stares at the thorns, oblivious to the rose.

Strange, the desire for certain pleasures is a part of my pain.

We are all prisoners but some of us are in cells with windows and some without.

I am one of those who believe that spiritual progress is a rule of human life, but the approach to perfection is slow and painful. If a woman elevates herself in one respect and is retarded in another, it is because the rough trail that leads to the mountain peak is not free of ambushes of thieves and lairs of wolves.

In the depths of your hopes and desires, lies your silent knowledge of the beyond, and like seeds dreaming beneath the snow, your heart dreams of spring. Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.

I AM IGNORANT of absolute truth. But I am humble before my ignorance and therein lies my honor and my reward.

Half of what I say is meaningless; but I say it so that the other half may reach you.

When you reach the end of what you should know, you will be at the beginning of what you should sense.

To belittle, you have to be little.

You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts.

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

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.

Keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life.

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.

Music is the language of the spirit. It opens the secret of life bringing peace, abolishing strife.

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

You may forget with whom you laughed, but you will never forget with whom you wept.

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. To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving; To rest at noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy; To return home at eventide with gratitude; And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise on your lips.