I prefer to be a dreamer among the humblest, with visions to be realized, than lord among those without dreams and desires.
Khalil GibranRead
Some think I wink at them when I shut my eyes to avoid their sight.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that ignoring certain people can be misunderstood as an act of disdain or rejection.
Khalil Gibran's quote reflects on the complexities of human perception and interaction. It highlights how shutting one's eyes, an act typically associated with avoidance or a desire to not engage, can lead others to interpret it as a deliberate slight or gesture of contempt. This speaks to the ways in which our actions can be misread and the misunderstandings that can arise in our relationships with others.
In practice
In a discussion about interpersonal relationships, one might quote Gibran to illustrate how actions can be misinterpreted.
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.
Man, by his very nature, tends to give himself an explanation of the world into which he is born. And this is what distinguishes him from the other species. Every individual, even the least intelligent, the lowest of outcasts, from childhood on gives himself some explanation of the world. And with it he manages to live. And without it, he would sink into madness.
Someday you will die, and until you know that, you're useless to me.
What gets in our way is history and culture and religion and economic conditions. It is part of the hypnosis of our social conditioning.
All men alike stand condemned, not by alien codes of ethics, but by their own, and all men therefore are conscious of guilt.
The Gospel lives in conversation with culture, and if the Church holds back from the culture, the Gospel itself falls silent. Therefore, we must be fearless in crossing the threshold of the communication and information revolution now taking place.
We live in a society in which it is normal to be sick; and sick to be abnormal.
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