AMBITION What good is there, pray thee tellme, Injostling thorugh the crowd inlife, 'Mid the argumental tumult, Protestation, and endless strife; Mole-like burrowing in darkness, Grasping for the spider's thread, Always thwarted in ambition, Until the living join the dead? - Khalil Gibran APPEARANCE The appearnace of things changes according to the emotion, and thus we see magic andbeauty in them, while the magic and beauty are really in ourselves. - Khalil Gibran The purpose of the spirit in the Heart is concealed, and by outer Appearance cannot be judged. - Khalil Gibran BEAUTY Beauty is that whcih attracts your soul, and that which loves togive and not to receive. When you meet beauty, you feel thatthe hands deep witin your inner self are stretched forth to bring her into the domain of your heart. It is a magnificencce combined of sorrow and joy; it is the Unseen which you see, and the Vague which you understand, and the MUte which you hear- it is the Holy of Holies that begins in yourself and ends vastly beyond your earthly imagination. - Khalil Gibran  TL-T-407 Are you troubled by the many faiths that Mankind professes? Are you lost in the valley of conflicting beliefs? Do you think that the freedom of heresy is less burdensome than the yoke of submission, and the liberty of dissent safer than the stronghold of acquiescence? - Khalil Gibran If such be the case, then make Beauty your religion, and worship her as your godhead; for she is the visible, manifest and prfect handiwork of God. Cast off those who have toyed with godliness as if it were a sham, joining together greed and arrogrance; but believe instead in the divinity of beauty that is at once the beginning of your worship of Life, and the source of your hunger for Happiness. - Khalil Gibran Do penance before Beauty, and atone for your sins, for Beauty brings your heart closer to the throne of woman, who is the mirror of your affections and the teacher of your heart in the ways of Nature, which is your life's home. - Khalil Gibran WM-ST-33 Only our spirits can understand beauty, or live and grow with it. It puzzles our minds; we are unable to describe it in words; it is a sensation that our eyes cannot see, derived from both the one who observes and the one who is looked upon. Real beauty is a ray which emanates from teh holy of holies of the spirit, and illuminates the body, as life comes from the depths of the earth and gives color and scent to a flower. - Khalil Gibran Beauty is that harmony between joy and sorrow which begins in our holy of holies and ends beyond the scope of our imagination. - Khalil Gibran KG-P-93 Beauty is not in the face; Beauty is a light in the heart. - Khalil Gibran MS-75 FATE Circumstances drive us on In narrow paths by Kismet hewn. For Fate has ways we cannot change, While weakness preys upon our Will; We bolster with excuse the self, And help that Fate ourselves to kill. - Khalil Gibran P-74 Life takes us up and bears us from one place to another; Fate moves us from one point to another. And we, caught up between these twain, hear dreadful voices and see only that which stands as a hindrance and obstacle in our path. - Khalil Gibran  WM-ST-46 FIRST LOVE Every young man remembers his first lvoe and tries to recapture that strange hour, the memory of which changes his deepest feeling and makes him so happy in spiet of all the bitterness of its mystery. - Khalil Gibran FLOWERS The flowers of the field are the children of sun's affection and nature's love; and thechildren of men are the flowers of love and compassion.BW-ST-122 FORBIDDEN When you behold a man turning aside from Things forbidden that bring Abysmal crime to self, look Upon him with eyes of love, for He is a preserver of God in him. - Khalil Gibran T-372 FREEDOM I love Freedom, and my love for true Freedom grew with my growing knowledge Of the people's surrender to slavery And oppression and tyranny, and of Their submission to the horrible idols Erected by the past ages and polished By the parched lips of the slaves. But I lvoe those slaves with my love For freedom, for they blindly kissed The jaws of ferocious beasts in calm And blissful unawareness, feeling not The venom of the smiling viper, and Unknowingly digging their graves with Their own fingers. - Khalil Gibran SH-T-100 Dying for Freedom is nobleer than living in The shadow ofweak submission, for He who embraces death with the sword Of Truth in his hand will eternalizse With the Eternity of Truth, for Life Is weaker than Death and Death is Weaker than Truth. - Khalil Gibran SHT-342 The free on earth builds of his strife A prison for his own duress, When he is freed from his own kin, Is slave to thought and love's caress. - Khalil Gibran Life without Freedom is like a body without a soul, and Freedom without Thought is like a confused spirit... Life, Freedom and Thought are three-in-one, and are everlasting and never pass away.  - Khalil Gibran TM-ST-62 Freedom bids us to her table where we may partake of her savory food and rich wine; but when we sit down at her board, we eat ravenously and glut ourselves.- Khalil Gibran WM-ST-47 You may chain my hands and shackle my feet; you may even throw me into a dark prison, but you shall not enslave my thinking because it is free.- Khalil Gibran FRIENDSHIP Friendship with the ignorant is as foolish as arguing with a drunkard. - Khalil Gibran WM-ST-62 GENTLENESS The gentleness of some is like A polished shell with silky feel, Lacking the precious pearl within Oblivious of the brother's weal. When you shall meet one who is strong And gentle too, pray feast your eyes; For he is glorious to behold, The blind can see his qualities. - Khalil Gibran P-59 GLORY One hour devoted to the pursuit of Beauty And Love is worth a full century of glory Given by the frightened weak to the strong. - Khalil Gibran TL-T-411 I have seen you, my brother, sitting upon the throne of glory, and around you stood your people acclaiming your majesty, and singing praises of your great deeds, extolling your wisdom, and gazing upon you as though in the presence of a prophet, their spirits exulting even to the canopy of heaven.  - Khalil Gibran And as you gazed upon your subjects, I saw in your face the marks of happiness and power and triumph, as if you were the soul of their body. - Khalil Gibran but when I looked again, behold I found you alone in your loneliness, standing by the side of your throne, and exile stretching his hand in every direction, as if pleading for mercy and kindness from invisible ghosts-begging for shelter, even such as has naught in it but warmth and friendliness. - Khalil Gibran GOD Man has worshipped his own self since the beginning, calling that self by appropriate titles, until now, when he employs the word "God" to mean that same self. - Khalil Gibran SH-T-391 Most religions speak of God in the masculine gender. To me He is as much a mother as he is a Father. he is both the father and the mother in one; and Woman is God-Mother. The God-Father may be reached through the mind or the imagination. But the God-Mother can be reached through the heart only - through love. And Love is that holy wine which the gods distill from their hearts and pour into the hearts of men. Those only taste it pure and divine whose hearts have been cleansed of all the animal lusts. For clean hearts to be drunk with love is to be drunk with God. Those, on the other hand, who drink it mixed with the wines of earthly passions taste but the orgies of devils in Hell. - Khalil Gibran  KG-P-94 GOLD Gold leads into gold, then into restlessness, and finally into crushing misery. - Khalil Gibran TL-T-403 The life that the rich man spends in heaping up gold is in truth like the life of the worms in the grave. it is a sign of fear. - Khalil Gibran HAPPINESS I sought happiness in my solitude, and As I drew close to her I heard my soul Whisper into my heart, saying, "The Happiness you seek is a virgin, born And reared in the depths of each heart, And she emerges not from her birthplace." And when I opened my heart to find her, I discovered in its domain only her Mirror and her cradle and her raiment, And happiness was not there. - Khalil Gibran SH-T-101 Happiness is myth we seek, If manifested surely irks; Like river speeding to the plain, On its arrival slows and murks. - Khalil Gibran For man is happy only in His aspiration to the heights; When he attains his goal, he cools And longs for other distant flights. - Khalil Gibran P-57 Happiness on earth is but a fleet, Passing ghost, which man craves At any cost in gold or time. And When the phantom becomes the Reality, man soon wearies of it. - Khalil Gibran T-371 HEAVEN The angels count of every tear shed by sorrow; and they bring to the ears of the spirits hovering in the heavens of the Infinite each song of Joy wrought from our affections.- Khalil Gibran There, in the world to come, we shall see and feel all the vibrations of our feelings and the motions of our hearts. We shall understand the meaning of the divinity within us, whom we condemn because we are prompted by Despair. - Khalil Gibran  WM-ST-32 HELL Hell is not in torture; Hell is in an empty heart. - Khalil Gibran MS-74 HUMANITY Humanity is the spirit of the Supreme Being on earth, and that humanity is standing amidst ruins, hiding its nakedness behind tattered rags, shedding tears upon hollow cheeks, and calling for its children with pitiful voice. But the children are busy singing their clan's anthem; they are busy sharpening the swords and cannot hear the cry of their mothers. - Khalil Gibran Humainty is the spirit of the Supreme Being on earth, and that Supreme Being preaches love and good-will. But the people ridicule such teachings?. The Nazarene Jesus listened, and crucifixiion was his lot; Socrates heard the voice and followed it, and he too fell victim in body. The followers of the Nazarene and Socrates are the followers of Deity, and since people will not kill them, they deride them, sayihng, "Ridicule is more bitter than killing." - Khalil Gibran TL-T-5 My soul preached to me and showed me that I am neither more than the pygmy, nor less than the giant. - Khalil Gibran Ere my soul preached to me, I looked upon humanity as two men: one weak, whom I pitied, and the other strong, whom I followed or resisted in definace. - Khalil Gibran But now I have learned that I was as both are and made from the same elements. My origin is their origin, my conscience is their conscience, my contention is their contention, and my pilgrimage is their pilgrimage. - Khalil Gibran If they sin, I am also a sinner. If they do well, I take pride in their well-doing. If they rise, I rise with them. If they stay inert, I share their slothfulness. - Khalil Gibran TM-ST-31 IGNORANCE In the house of Ignorance there is no mirror in whcih to view your soul. - Khalil Gibran SH-T-87 ILLUSION Man's will is a floating shadow In the midn he conceives, And the irghts of mankind pass and Perish like the Autumn leaves. - Khalil Gibran P-51 IMAGINATION Thoughts have a higher dewlling place than the visible world, and its skies are not clouded by sensuality. Imagination finds a road to the realm of the gods, and there man can glimpse that which is to be after the souls' liberation fromt he world of substance. - Khalil Gibran TM-ST-74 With one leap it [the imagiantion] would reach the core of life, divest it of all excerescences, then burn these excrescences and fling their ashes into the eyes of those who brought them into being. So must all imaginations be. - Khalil Gibran KG-P-24 IMITATION The people of the city feign great Wisdom and knowledge, but their Fancy remains false forever, for They are but experts of imitation. It gives them pride to calculate That a barter will bring no loss Or gain. The idiot imagines himself A king and no power can alter his Great thoughts and dreams. The Proud fool mistakes his mirror for The sky, and his shadow for a Moon that gleams high from the Heavens. - Khalil Gibran T-368 IMMORTALITY Death on earth, to son of earth Is final, but to him who is Ethereal, it is but the start Of triumph certain to be his. If one embraces dawn in dreams, He is immortal! Should he sleep His long night through, he surely fades int a sea of slumber deep. For he who closely hugs the ground When wide awake will crawl 'til end. And death, like sea, who braves it light Will cross it. Weighted will descend. - Khalil Gibran P-70 If I did not covet immortality, I would never have learned the song which has been sung through all of time. Rather, I would have been a suicide, nothing remaining of me except my ashes hidden within the tomb.... Life is a darkness which ends as in the sunburst of the day. The yearning of my heart tells me there is peace in the grave. If some fool tells you the sould perishes like the body and that which dies never returns, tell him the flower perishes but the seed remains and lies before us as the secret of life everlasting. - Khalil Gibran MS-58 IMPERMANENCE mankind is like verses written Upont the surface of the rills. - Khalil Gibran P-35 INDICTMENT I will gladly exchange my outcries for cheerful laugher, speak eulogies instead of indictments, replace excess with moderation, provided you show me a just governor, a lawyer of integrity, a religious heirarch who practices, a husband who looks upon his wife with the same eyes as he looks upon himself. - Khalil Gibran TM-ST-96 INFINITE We are naught but frail atoms inthe heavens of the infinite; and we cannot but obey and surrender to will of Providence. If we love, our love is neither from us, nor is it for us. if we rejoice, our joy is not in us, but in Life itself. If we suffer, our pain lies not in our wounds, but int he very heart of Nature. - Khalil Gibran WM-ST-23 INTOXICATION The human turns to drugging, As to nursing from the breast; Coming to age of weaning Only when he's put to rest. - Khalil Gibran P-39 ISLAND Life is an island in an ocean of loneliness, an island whose rocks are hopes, whose trees are dreams, whose flowers are solitude, and whose brooks are thirst. Your life, my fellow men, is an island separated from all other islands and regions. No matter how many are the ships that leave your shores for other climes, no matter how many are the fleets that touch your coast, you remain a solitary island, suffering the pangs of loneliness and yearning for happiness. You are unknown to your fellow men and far removed from their sympathy and understanding. - Khalil Gibran WM-ST-41 JOURNALIST Are you a journalist who sells his principles in the markets of slaves and who fattens on gossip and misfortune and crime? If so, you are like a ravenous vulture preying upon rotting carrion. - Khalil Gibran WM-ST-35 JUDGEMENT The learned man who has not judgment is like an unarmed soldier proceeding into battle. His wrath will poison the pure sping of the life of his community and he will be like the grain of aloes in a pitcher of pure water. - Khalil Gibran WM-ST-54 -------- JUSTICE Justice on earth would cause the Jinn To cry at misuse of the word, And were teh dead to witness it, they'd mock at fairness in this world. Yea, death and prison we mete out To small offenders of the laws, While honor, wealth, and full respect On greater pirates we bestow. To steal a flower we call mean, To rob a field is chivalry; Who kills the body he must die, Who kills the spirit he goes free. - Khalil Gibran P-47 What justice does authority display when it kills the killer? When it imprisons the robber? When it descends on a neighbouring country and slays its people? What does justice think of the authority under which a killer punishes the one who kills, and a thief sentences the one who steals? - Khalil Gibran TL-T-9 When a man kills another man, the people say he is a murdere, but when the Emir kills him, the Emir is just. When a man robs a monastery, they say he is a thief, but when the Emir robs him of his life, the Emir is honourable. When a woman betrays her husband, they say she is an adulteress, but when the Emir makes her walk naked in the streets and stones her later, the Emir is noble. Shedding of blood is forbidden, but who made it lawful for the Emir? Stealing one's monye is a crime, but taking away one's life is a noble act. Betrayal of a husband may be an ugly deed, but stoning of living souls is a beauitiful sight. Shall we meet evil with evil and say this is the Law? Shall we fight corruption with greater corruption and say this is the Rule? Shall we conquer crimes with more crimes and say this is justice. - Khalil Gibran SR-T-315 The gifts which derive from justice are greater than those that spring from charity. - Khalil Gibran WM-ST-65 KINDNESS From a sensitive woman's heart springs the happinesss of mankind, and from the kindness of her noble spirit comes mankind's affection. - Khalil Gibran SR-T-262 The kindness of the poeple is but an Empty shell containing no gem or Precious pearl. With two hearts do people live; a small one of deep Softness, the other of steel. And Kindness is too often a shield, And generosity too often a sword. - Khalil Gibran T-367 KINGDOM OF HEAVEN Vain are the beliefs and teachings thta make man miserable, and false is the goodness that leads him into sorrow and despair, for it is man's purpose to be happy on this earth and lead the way to felicity and preach its gospel whereever he goes. He who does not see the kingdom of heaven in this life will never see it in the coming life. We came into this life by exile, but we came as innocent creature of God, to learnhow to worship the holy and eternal spirit and seek the hidden secrets within ourselves fromt he beauty of life. - Khalil Gibran SR-T-256 KNOWLEDGE Learning follows various roads. We not the start but not the end. For Time and Fate must rule the course, While we see not beyond the bend. The best of knowledge is a dream The gainer holds stedfast, uncowed By ridicule, and moves serene, Despised and lowly in the crowd. - Khalil Gibran P-52 LAW What is Law? Who saw it coming with the sun from the depths of heaven? What human saw the heart of God and found its will or purpose? In what century did the angels walk among the people and preach to t hem, saying, "Forbid the weak from enjoying life, and kill the outlaws with the sharp edge of the sword, and step upon the sinners with iron feet"? - Khalil Gibran SR-T-316 Are you a soldier compelled by the harsh law of man to forsake wife and children, and go forth into the field of battle for the sake of Greed, which your leaders mis-call Duty? Are you a prisoner, pent up in a dark dungeon for some pretty offense and condemned by those who seek to reform man by corrupting him?Are you a young woman on whom God has bestowed beauty, but who has fallen prey to the base lust of the rich, who deceived you and bought your body but not your heart, and abandones you to misery and distress? If you are one of these, you are a martyr to man's law. You are wretched, and your wretchedness is the fruit of the iniquilty of the strong and the injustice of the tyrant, the brutality of the rich, and the selfishness of the lewd and the convetous. - Khalil Gibran WM-ST-44 Man is weak by his own hand, for he Has refashioned God's law into his Own confining manner of life, chaining Himself with the coarse irons of the Rules of society which he desired; and He is steadfast in refusing to be aware Of the great tragedy he has cast upon Himself and his children and their sons. Man has erected on this earth a prison Of quarrels from which he cannot now Escape, and misery is his voluntary lot. - Khalil Gibran T-366 LAWS People are saying that I am the enemy of just laws, of family ties and old tradition. Those people are telling the truth. I do not love man-made laws... I love the sacred and spiritual kindness which should be the source of every law upon the earth, for kindness is the shadow of God in man. - Khalil Gibran MS-V Human society has yielded for seventy centuries to corrupted laws until it cannot understand the meaning of superior and eternal laws...Spiritual disease is inherited from one generation to another until it becomes a part of the people, who look upon it, not as a disease, but someone free from the germs of this disease, they would think of him with shame and disgrace. - Khalil Gibran SP-P-31 LEARNING Learning nourishes the seed but it gives you no seed of its own. - Khalil Gibran MS-72 Reason and learning are like body and soul. Without the body, the soul is nothing but empty wind. Without the soul, the body is but a senseless frame.Reason without learning is like the untilled soil, or like the human body that lacks nourishment. - Khalil Gibran WM-ST-55 Learning is the only wealth tyrants cannot despoil. Only death can dim the lamp of knowledge that is within you. The true wealth of a nation lies not in its gold or silver but in its learning, wisdom, and in the uprightness of its sons. - Khalil Gibran WM-ST-61 LIBERTY I walked lonely in the Valley of the Shadow of Life, where the past attempts to conceal itself in guild, and the soul of the future folds and rests itself too long. There, at the edge of Blood and Tears River, which crawled like a poisonous viper and twisted like a criminal's dreams, I listened to the frightened whisper of the ghosts of slaves, and gazed at nothingness. When midnight came and the spirits emerged from hidden places, I saw a cadaverous, dying spectre fall to her knees, gazing at the moon. I approached her, asking, "What is your name?" "My name is Liberty," replied this ghastly shadow of a corpse. And I inquired, "Where are your children?" and Liberty, tearful and weak, gasped, "One died crucified, another died mad, and the third one is not yet born". She limped away and spoke further, but the mist in my eyes and cries of my heart prefvented sight or hearing. - Khalil Gibran SH-T-66 Everything on earth lives according to the law of nature, and from that law emerges the glory and joy of liberty; but man is denied this fortune, because he set for the God-given soul a limited and earthly law of his own. He made for himself strict rules. Man build a narrow and painful prison in which he secluded his affections and desires. He dug out a deep grave in which he buried his heart and its purpose. If an individual, through the dictates of his soul, declares his withdrawl froms society and violates the law, his fellowmen will say he is a rebel worth of exile, or an infamous creature worthy only of execution. Will man remain a slave of self-confinement until the end of the world? Or will he be freed by the passing of time and live in the Spirit for the Spirit? Will man insist upon staring downward and backward at the earth? Or will he turn his eyes toward the sun so he will not see the shadow of his body amongst the skulss and thorns? - Khalil Gibran SR-T-228 LIFE Man struggles to find life outside himself, unaware that the life he is seeking is within him. - Khalil Gibran SH-T-144 Life is a woman bathing in the tears of her lovers and anointing herself with the blodd of her victims. Her raiments are white days, lines with the darknesss of night. She takes the human heart to lover, but denies herself in marriage. - Khalil Gibran Life is an enchantress Who seduces us with her beauty- But he who knows her wiles Will flee her enchantments. - Khalil Gibran WM-ST-85 How often I talked with Harvard professors, yet felt as if I were talking to a professor from Al-Azhar! How often I have conversed with some Bostonian ladies and heard them say things I used to hear from simple and ignorant old women in Syria! Life is one, Mikhail; it manifests itself in the viallages of Lebanon as in Boston, New York, and San Francisco. - Khalil Gibran KG-P-37 LIGHT The true light is that which emanates from within man, and reveals the secretsw of the heart to the soul, making it happy and contented with life. - Khalil Gibran SR-T-255 LIMITATION The person who is limited in heart and thought is inclined to love that which is limited in life, and the weak-sighted cannot see more than one cubit ahead upon the path he treads, nor more than one cubit of the wall upon which he rests his shoulder. - Khalil Gibran SH-T-129 LONGING In the will of man there is a power of longing which turns the mist in ourselves into sun. - Khalil Gibran SP-ST-86 LUST Beauty reveals itself to us as she sits on the throne of glory; but we approach her in the name of Lust, snatch off her crown of purity, and pollute her garment with our evil-doing. - Khalil Gibran WM-ST-46