Khalil Gibran

It has been said that next to hunger and thirst, our most basic human need is for storytelling.

He who has not looked on Sorrow will never see Joy. [for without sorrow how would you know what joy is? Contrast provides peceptive clarity]

Life is weaker than Death and Death is weaker than Truth.

Sorrow is too great to exist in small hearts.

A shy failure is nobler than an immodest success.

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.

Braving obstacles and hardships is braver than retreat to tranquility.

The fool sees naught but folly; and the madman only madness. Yesterday I asked a foolish man to count the fools among us. He laughed and said, "This is too hard a thing to do, and it will take too long. Were it not better to count only the wise?"

There is a desire deep within the soul which drives man from the seen to the unseen, to philosophy and to the divine.

Thinking is always the stumbling stone to poetry.

Wisdom is not in words; Wisdom is meaning within words.

If aught I have said is truth, that truth shall reveal itself in a clearer voice, and in words more kin to your thoughts.

The soul is an embryo in the body of Man, and the day of death is the Day of awakening, for it is the Great era of labour and the rich Hour of creation.

I am a poet who composes what life proses, and who proses what life composes.

Braving obstacles and hardships is nobler than retreat to tranquility. The butterfly that hovers around the lamp until it dies is more admirable than the mole that lives in a dark tunnel.

Love is the veil between lover and lover.

Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.

A truth is to be known always, to be uttered sometimes.

Then it is also in my heart to be worthy of your hate.

There must be something strangely sacred about salt. It is in our tears and in the sea.

In the depth of your hopes and desires lies your silent knowledge of the beyond.