From Wiki:
Khalil Gibran (full Arabic name Gibran Khalil Gibran, sometimes spelled Kahlil;[a] Arabic: جبران خليل جبران / ALA-LC: Jubrān Khalīl Jubrān or Jibrān Khalīl Jibrān) (January 6, 1883 – April 10, 1931) was a Lebanese artist, poet, and writer.
Born in the town of Bsharri in the north of modern-day Lebanon (then part of Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate, Ottoman Empire), as a young man he immigrated with his family to the United States, where he studied art and began his literary career, writing in both English and Arabic.
In the Arab world, Gibran is regarded as a literary and political rebel. His romantic style was at the heart of a renaissance in modern Arabic literature, especially prose poetry, breaking away from the classical school. In Lebanon, he is still celebrated as a literary hero.[6]
He is chiefly known in the English-speaking world for his 1923 book The Prophet, an early example of inspirational fiction including a series of philosophical essays written in poetic English prose. The book sold well despite a cool critical reception, gaining popularity in the 1930s and again especially in the 1960s counterculture.[6][7] Gibran is the third best-selling poet of all time, behind Shakespeare and Laozi.[7]
Khalil Gibran was born into a Maronite Catholic family from the historical town of Bsharri in northern Mount Lebanon, then a semi-autonomous part of the Ottoman Empire.[8]
His mother Kamila, daughter of a priest, was thirty when he was born; his father Khalil was her third husband.[9] As a result of his family's poverty, Gibran received no formal schooling during his youth in Lebanon.
However, priests visited him regularly and taught him about the Bible, as well as the Arabic and Syriac languages.
From Wiki: Much more there.
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1. Be thankful for the difficult times. They have showed you how strong you can be.
“Out of suffering
have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.”
2. Kindness is a quality of the strong.
“Tenderness and
kindness are not signs of weakness and despair, but manifestations of strength
and resolution.”
3. There’s no such thing as absolute truth.
“Say not, ‘I have
found the truth,’ but rather, ‘I have found a
truth.’
“I AM IGNORANT of
absolute truth. But I am humble before my ignorance and therein lies my honor
and my reward.”
4. It’s the small people who try to belittle and humiliate others.
“To belittle, you
have to be little.”
5. The harm others do to you is easier to forget than the harm you do to others.
“If the other
person injures you, you may forget the injury; but if you injure him you will
always remember.”
6. You might forget those who made you laugh, but you will never forget those who were by your side in your darkest hours.
“You may forget
with whom you laughed, but you will never forget with whom you wept.”
“Hearts united in
pain and sorrow will not be separated by joy and happiness. Bonds that are woven in sadness are stronger than the
ties of joy and pleasure. Love that is washed by tears will remain eternally
pure and faithful.”
7. It’s the simple things in life that are the most extraordinary.
“In the sweetness
of friendship; let there be laughter and the
sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of little things the heart finds its
morning and is refreshed.”
8. Love is life. And life is love.
“When you love
you should not say, “God is in my heart,” but rather, “I am in the heart of
God.”
“Life without
love is like a tree without blossoms or
fruit.”
9. Put love into your work.
“Work is love
made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is
better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and
take alms of those who work with joy. For if you bake bread with indifference,
you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man’s hunger. And if you grudge the
crushing of the grapes, your grudge distills a poison in the wine. And if you
sing though as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle man’s ears to the
voices of the day and the voices of the night.”
“They deem me mad
because I will not sell my days for gold; and I deem them mad because they think
my days have a price.”
10. To understand the heart and mind of a person, look at what he aspires to be.
“To understand
the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but at
what he aspires to.”
“Trust in dreams,
for in them is the hidden gate to eternity.”
11. True love can’t be possessed.
“Love possesses
not nor would it be possessed; For love is sufficient unto love. And think not
you can direct the course of love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.”
12. Seek to put up with bad manners pleasantly.
“The real test of
good manners is to be able to put up with bad manners pleasantly.”
13. Love binds everything together in perfect harmony.
“They say: ‘If a
man knew himself, he would know all mankind.’ I say: ‘If a man loved mankind, he
would know something of himself.”
14. Always look on the bright side of life.
“The optimist
sees the rose and not its thorns; the pessimist stares at the thorns, oblivious
to the rose.”
15. We don’t see things as they are. We see things as we are.
“The appearance
of things changes according to the emotions; and thus we see magic and beauty in
them, while the magic and beauty are really in ourselves.”
16. True love is the offspring of spiritual affinity.
“It is wrong to
think that love comes from long companionship
and persevering courtship. Love is the offspring of spiritual affinity and
unless that affinity is created in a moment, it will not be created for years or
even generations.”
17. Let there be space in your relationship.
“Let there be
spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
Love one another but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each
other’s cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat
not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one
of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with
the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping. For only
the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together, yet not too near
together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the
cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.”
18. If you pray when it rains, make sure you also pray when the sun shines.
“You pray in your
distress and in your need; would that you might pray also in the fullness of
your joy and in your days of abundance.”
19. When you give of yourself, that’s when you truly give.
“You give but
little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that
you truly give.”
20. Real beauty comes from within.
“Beauty is not in
the face; beauty is a light in the
heart.”
21. Your children are not your children. They are sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
“Your children
are not your children. They are sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you. And though they are with you yet they
belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts, for they
have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, for
their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in
your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like
you.”
22. Every relationship should be free from bondage.
“No human
relation gives one possession in another—every two souls are absolutely
different. In friendship or in love, the two side by side raise hands together
to find what one cannot reach alone.”
“If you love
somebody, let them go, for if they return, they
were always yours. And if they don’t, they never were.”
23. Be thankful for both the good and the bad in your life. It’s all meant to teach you something.
“I have learned
silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from
the unkind; yet, strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers.”
“When you are
joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has
given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in
your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has
been your delight.”
24. Your attitude towards life will determine life’s attitude towards you.
“Your living is
determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring
to life; not so much by what happens to you
as by the way your mind looks at what happens.”
25. A friend who is far away is sometimes much nearer than one who is at hand.
“A friend who is
far away is sometimes much nearer than one who is at hand. Is not the mountain far more awe-inspiring and more clearly
visible to one passing through the valley than to those who inhabit the
mountain?”
With thanks to Earth
We are One
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