Khalil Gibran

I prefer to be a dreamer among the humblest, with visions to be realized, than lord among those without dreams and desires.

Be patient, for it is from doubt that knowledge is born.

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

God made Truth with many doors to welcome every believer who knocks on them.

Happiness is a vine that takes root and grows within the heart, never outside it.

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

The smallest act of kindness is worth more than the greatest intention.

My Lebanon is a flock of birds fluttering in the early morning as shepherds lead their sheep into the meadow & rising in the evening as farmers return from their fields and vineyards.You have your Lebanon and its people. I have my Lebanon and its people.

Thus with my lips have I denounced you, while my heart, bleeding within me, called you tender names. It was love lashed by its own self that spoke. It was pride half slain that fluttered in the dust. It was my hunger for your love that raged from the housetop, while my own love, kneeling in silence, prayed your forgiveness.

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

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

Wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving.

Some think I wink at them when I shut my eyes to avoid their sight.

If in the twilight of memory we should meet once more,we shall speak again together and you shall sing to me a deeper song. And if our hands should meet in another dream we shall build another tower in the sky.

The brooks flow to their lover, the sea, and the flowers smile at the object of their passion, the light. The mist rolls down to its beloved, the valley. And I? In me is what brooks do not know, what flowers do not hear, what the mist does not apprehend. You see me alone in my love, solitary in my yearning.

Generosity is giving more than you can, and pride is taking less than you need.

My friend, be not like him who sits by his fireside and watches the fire go out, then blows vainly upon the dead ashes. Do not give up hope or yield to despair because of that which is past, for to bewail the irretrievable is the worst of human frailties.

And let it direct your passion with reason, that your passion may livethrough its own daily resurrection, and like the phoenix rise above its own ashes.

Tenderness and kindness are not signs of weakness and despair, but manifestations of strength and resolution.

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

To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but at what he aspires to.