I prefer to be a dreamer among the humblest, with visions to be realized, than lord among those without dreams and desires.
Khalil GibranRead
Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky, We fell them down and turn them into paper, That we may record our emptiness.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the beauty of trees and the tragic irony of turning them into paper to express our feelings of emptiness.
In this quote, Khalil Gibran poetically illustrates the profound relationship between nature and humanity. He likens trees to poems created by the earth, which beautifully extend into the sky. However, he emphasizes a tragic truth: humans cut down these majestic beings to make paper, using it to write down their feelings of emptiness and lack of fulfillment. Thus, Gibran comments on the symbolic loss of beauty and the shallow expressions that often arise from it.
Themes
TreesNaturePoetryEmptinessBeautyLoss
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a speech about environmental conservation to highlight the beauty of nature.
More from Khalil Gibran
All quotes βBe patient, for it is from doubt that knowledge is born.
Khalil GibranRead
Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.
Khalil GibranRead
God made Truth with many doors to welcome every believer who knocks on them.
Khalil GibranRead
Happiness is a vine that takes root and grows within the heart, never outside it.
Khalil GibranRead
Solitude has soft, silky hands, but with strong fingers it grasps the heart and makes it ache with sorrow.
Khalil GibranRead
Similar quotes
This hill crossed with broken pines and maples lumpy with the burial mounds of uprooted hemlocks (hurricane of '38) out of their rotting hearts generations rise trying once more to become the forest just beyond them tall enough to be called trees in their youth like aspen a bouquet of young beech is gathered they still wear last summer's leaves the lightest brown almost translucent how their stubbornness has decorated the winter woods.
Grace PaleyRead
There are little pockets of old time in London, where things and places stay the same, like bubble in amber.
Neil GaimanRead
It is a beauteous evening, calm and free, The holy time is quiet as a nun Breathless with adoration; the broad sun Is sinking down in its tranquillity; The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the sea: Listen! the mighty being is awake, And doth with his eternal motion make A sound like thundereverlastingly.
William WordsworthRead
How we are using up our home, how we are living and polluting the planet is frightening. It was evident when I was a child. It's more evident now.
Maya LinRead
How sublime to look down on the workhouse of nature, to see her clouds, hail, snow, rain, thunder, all fabricated at our feet!
Thomas JeffersonRead
Throb thine with Nature's throbbing breast.
Ralph Waldo EmersonRead