Remarks by Kahlil Gibran | V2Melody Quotations

“I am ignorant of absolute truth. But I am humble before my ignorance and therein lies my honor and my reward.”

Honour found in owning what one cannot know · Widely attested saying

“Perplexity is the beginning of knowledge.”

Confusion as the door rather than the wall · Widely attested saying

“A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle.”

Knowledge measured by what it does · Widely attested saying

“Hell is not in torture. Hell is in an empty heart.”

Damnation located in vacancy rather than fire · The Sayings of the Brook

“Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love.”

Allegiance shifted from thrones to three inner sovereignties · Collected spiritual prose

“I have existed from all eternity and, behold, I am here; and I shall exist till the end of time, for my being has no end.”

The person felt as a wave of a longer being · The Vision / collected spiritual prose

“Sometimes I myself feel shapeless. I feel as if it were the consciousness of a cloud before it becomes rain or snow.”

The self before it has chosen a form · Letter to Mary Haskell, 22 April 1924

“I am writing something which may turn the whole arabic world against me. But I am prepared for it. I am getting used to being nailed to the cross.”

Work accepted even when it costs belonging · Letter to Mary Haskell, 23 October 1912

“I have been wrestling with an angel and a devil during the past two months. And it is indeed terrible to be between two powers so different.”

Creation described as a fight on two fronts · Letter to James Oppenheim, circa 1916

“You have your Lebanon and its dilemma. I have my Lebanon and its beauty.”

Two maps of the same country, one of quarrel and one of love · Essay You Have Your Lebanon and I Have My Lebanon

“If Lebanon were not my country, I would have chosen it to be.”

Homeland claimed by election as well as birth · Remark on Lebanon

“I am a stranger in this world, and there is a severe solitude and painful lonesomeness in my exile.”

Exile named as a weather of the soul · Collected personal remark

“Art must be a direct communication between the artist’s imagination and that of the looker.”

Art as a meeting of two imaginations without a clerk between · Remark on art, as commonly collected

“The most pitiful among men is he who turns his dreams into silver and gold.”

Dreams sold cheap become a kind of poverty · Sand and Foam, 1926

“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.”

Time refused as merchandise · Sand and Foam, 1926

“If you reveal your secret to the wind you should not blame the wind for revealing it to the trees.”

Confidences travel once they leave the mouth · Sand and Foam, 1926

“We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.”

Feeling prepared by earlier inner consent · Sand and Foam, 1926

“All our words are but crumbs that fall down from the feast of the mind.”

Speech as leftover from a richer inner banquet · Sand and Foam, 1926

“A sense of humour is a sense of proportion.”

Laughter as the scale that keeps the world in measure · Sand and Foam, 1926

“Remembrance is a form of meeting.”

Memory as a second presence · Sand and Foam, 1926

“Forgetfulness is a form of freedom.”

Release found in what the mind is willing to drop · Sand and Foam, 1926

“The creator gives no heed to the critic unless he becomes a barren inventor.”

Criticism matters only when it can also make · Spiritual Sayings of Kahlil Gibran

“My enemy said to me, Love your enemy. And I obeyed him and loved myself.”

The enemy as the self one must first accept · Spiritual Sayings of Kahlil Gibran

“To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but what he aspires to.”

Aspiration as the truer portrait than the résumé · Spiritual Sayings of Kahlil Gibran

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