Khalil Gibran

Love possesses not nor will it be possessed, for love is sufficient unto love.

Much of your pain is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.

The person you consider ignorant and insignificant is the one who came from God, that he might learn bliss from grief and knowledge from gloom.

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.

Trust in dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.

If the other person injures you, you may forget the injury; but if you injure him you will always remember.

Advance, and never halt, for advancing is perfection. Advance and do not fear the thorns in the path, for they draw only corrupt blood.

I wash my hands of those who imagine chattering to be knowledge, silence to be ignorance, and affection to be art.

Sadness is but a wall between two gardens.

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.

Faith is an oasis in the heart which will never be reached by the caravan of thinking.

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.

I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers.

Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.

Poetry, my dear friends, is a sacred incarnation of a smile. Poetry is a sigh that dries the tears. Poetry is a spirit who dwells in the soul, whose nourishment is the heart, whose wine is affection. Poetry that comes not in this form is a false messiah.

When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the 'nay' in your own mind, nor do you withhold the 'ay. And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart; For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed. When you part from your friend, you grieve not; For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.

Like sheaves of corn it gathers you unto itself. It threshes you to make you naked. It sifts you to free you from your husks. It grinds you to whiteness. It kneads you until you are pliant. And then it assigns you to its sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast. All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's Heart.

Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and the nights._x000D_ _x000D_ But your ears thirst for the sound of the heart's knowledge. _x000D_ _x000D_ You would know in words that which you have always known in thought. _x000D_ _x000D_ You would touch with your fingers the naked body of the dreams.

Truth is like the stars; it does not appear except from behind obscurity of the night. Truth is like all beautiful things in the world; it does not disclose its desirability except to those who first feel the influence of falsehood. Truth is a deep kindness that teaches us to be content in our everyday life and share with the people the same happiness.

We shall never understand one another until we reduce the language to seven words.

Only those return to Eternity Who on earth seek out Eternity.