Quill / Authors / Kahlil Gibran quotes
Kahlil Gibran quotes
Kahlil Gibran (1883 to 1931) was a Lebanese-American poet and painter, born in Bsharri, who moved to Boston as a child and later settled in New York. Everything Quill quotes from him is from The Prophet, published in English in 1923.
The book is a set of farewell speeches by an invented prophet, Almustafa, to the people of a city, covering love, work, children and death. It has been read at countless weddings and funerals. Taken a chapter at a time it holds up better than its greeting-card reputation suggests.
All 26 of the lines in Quill. Only lines checked against a public-domain text appear on this page.
The Prophet
Read The Prophet on Project Gutenberg
The freest song comes not through bars and wires.
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.
To judge you by your failures is to cast blame upon the seasons for their inconstancy.
You are good when you are one with yourself.
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
To measure you by your smallest deed is to reckon the power of ocean by the frailty of its foam.
Your friend is your needs answered.
You are good when you walk to your goal firmly and with bold steps.
You give but little when you give of your possessions.
Work is love made visible.
Verily the lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul, and then walks grinning in the funeral.
Love has no other desire but to fulfil itself.
Your reason and your passion are the rudder and the sails of your seafaring soul.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
Your daily life is your temple and your religion.
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping.
Your house shall be not an anchor but a mast.
Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup.
The soul unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals.
Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.
Oftentimes in denying yourself pleasure you do but store the desire in the recesses of your being.
In your longing for your giant self lies your goodness: and that longing is in all of you.
All your hours are wings that beat through space from self to self.
Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.
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