Spiritual Sayings of Kahlil Gibran
 
Page 5
The best of men is he who blushes when you praise him and remains silent when you defame him.
The writer who draws his material from a book is like one who borrows money only to lend it.
Distinguish between the gift that is an insult and the gift that is a token of respect.
The one who disagrees is more talked about than the one who agrees.
I never doubted a truth that needed an explanation unless I found myself having to analyze the explanation.
God has placed in each soul an apostle to lead us upon the illumined path. Yet many seek life from without, unaware that it is within them.
In education the life of the mind proceeds gradually from scientific experiments to intellectual theories, to spiritual feelings, and then to God.
We are still busy examining sea shells as if they were all that emerge from the sea of life to the shore of day and night.
The tree that contrives to cheat life by living in the shade withers when it is removed and replanted in the sun.
Exhaustion dooms every nation and every people; it is drowsy agony, death in a sort of slumber.
The potter can fashion a wine jug from clay, but nothing out of sand and gravel.
We devour the bread of charity because we are hungry; it revives, then slays us.
How savage is love that plants a flower and uproots a field; that revives us for a day and stuns us for an age.
The calamity of the sons lies in the endowments of the parents. And he who does not deny them and will remain the slave of Death until he dies.
The dead tremble before the tempest; but the living walk with it.
Strange are the self-worshipers, since they worship carrion.
There are mysteries within the soul which no hypothesis can uncover and no guess can revel.
Because he was born in fear and lives a coward, man hides in the crevices of the earth when he sees the tempest coming.
The bird has an an honor that man does not have. Man lives in the traps of his fabricated laws and traditions; but the birds live according to the natural law of God who causes the earth to turn around the sun.
Believing is one thing, doing another. Many talk like the sea but their lives are stagnant marshes.
Others raise their heads above the mountain tops, while their souls cling to the dark walls of caves.
Worship does not require seclusion and solitude.
Prayer is the song of the heart that makes its way to the throne of God even when entangled in the wailing of thousands of souls.
How distant I am from people when I am with them, and how close when they are far away.
People respect motherhood only when it wears the raiment of their laws.
Love, like death, changes everything.
The souls of some people are like school blackboards on which Time writes signs, rules and examples that are immediately erased with a wet sponge.
The reality of music is in that vibration that remains in the ear after the singer finishes his song and the player no longer plucks the strings.
What shall I say about him who borrows form me money to buy a sword with which to attack me?
My enemy said to me, "Love your enemy." And I obeyed him and loved myself.
The black said to the white, "If you were grey I would be lenient with you."
Many who know the price of everything are ignorant of its value.
Every man's history is written upon his forehead, but in a language none but he who receives revelations can read.
Show me you mother's face; I will tell you who you are.
The freedom of the one who boasts of it is a slavery.
Good taste is not in making the right choice, but in perceiving in something the natural unity between its quantities and qualities.
The coarseness of some is preferable to the gentleness of others.
When people abhor what they cannot comprehend, they are like those burning with fever, to whom the choicest food is unpalatable.
The wolf preys upon the lamb in the dark of the night, but the blood stains remain to accuse him by day.
Truth is the will and purpose of God in man.
I shall follow the path to wherever my destiny and my mission for Truth shall take me.
The man who inherits his wealth builds his mansion with money taken from the weak and the poor.
The last steps of the slaughtered bird are painful, involuntary and unknowing; but those who witness that grisly dance know what caused it.
God has placed a torch in your hearts that glows with knowledge and beauty; it is a sin to extinguish that torch and bury it in the ashes.
 
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