Kahlil Gibran

For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun? And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.

We are all like the bright moon, we still have our darker side.

I have seen a face with a thousand countenances, and a face that was but a single countenance as if held in a mould. I have seen a face whose sheen I could look through to the ugliness beneath, and a face whose sheen I had to lift to see how beautiful it was. I have seen an old face much lined with nothing, and a smooth face in which all things were graven. I know faces, because I look through the fabric my own eye weaves, and behold the reality beneath.

Smile, my beloved, like the gold smiles from my father's coffers.

And how shall you punish those whose remorse is already greater than their misdeeds?

Life is an island in an ocean of solitude and seclusion.Life is an island, rocks are its desires, trees its dreams, and flowers its loneliness, and it is in the middle of an ocean of solitude and seclusion.Your life, my friend, is an island separated from all other islands and continents. Regardless of how many boats you send to other shores, you yourself are an island separated by its own pains,secluded its happiness and far away in its compassion and hidden in its secrets and mysteries.I saw you, my friend, sitting upon a mound of gold, happy in your wealth and great in your riches and believing that a handful of gold is the secret chain that links the thoughts of the people with your own thoughts and links their feeling with your own.I saw you as a great conqueror leading a conquering army toward the fortress, then destroying and capturing it.On second glance I found beyond the wall of your treasures a heart trembling in its solitude and seclusion like the trembling of a thirsty man within a cage of gold and jewels, but without water.I saw you, my friend, sitting on a throne of glory surrounded by people extolling your charity, enumerating your gifts, gazing upon you as if they were in the presence of a prophet lifting their souls up into the planets and stars. I saw you looking at them, contentment and strength upon your face, as if you were to them as the soul is to the body.On the second look I saw your secluded self standing beside your throne, suffering in its seclusion and quaking in its loneliness. I saw that self stretching its hands as if begging from unseen ghosts. I saw it looking above the shoulders of the people to a far horizon, empty of everything except its solitude and seclusion.I saw you, my friend, passionately in love with a beautiful woman, filling her palms with your kisses as she looked at you with sympathy and affection in her eyes and sweetness of motherhood on her lips; I said, secretly, that love has erased his solitude and removed his seclusion and he is now within the eternal soul which draws toward itself, with love, those who were separated by solitude and seclusion.On the second look I saw behind your soul another lonely soul, like a fog, trying in vain to become a drop of tears in the palm of that woman.Your life, my friend, is a residence far away from any other residence and neighbors.Your inner soul is a home far away from other homes named after you. If this residence is dark, you cannot light it with your neighbor's lamp; if it is empty you cannot fill it with the riches of your neighbor; were it in the middle of a desert, you could not move it to a garden planted by someone else.Your inner soul, my friend, is surrounded with solitude and seclusion. Were it not for this solitude and this seclusion you would not be you and I would not be I. If it were not for that solitude and seclusion, I would, if I heard your voice, think myself to be speaking; yet, if I saw your face, i would imagine that I were looking into a mirror.

Trees are poems that the earth writes upon the sky.

And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair

You would measure time the measureless and the immeasurable.You would adjust your conduct and even direct the course of your spirit according to hours and seasons.Of time you would make a stream upon whose bank you would sit and watch its flowing.Yet the timeless in you is aware of life's timelessness,And knows that yesterday is but today's memory and tomorrow is today's dream.And that that which sings and contemplates in you is still dwelling within the bounds of that first moment which scattered the stars into space.Who among you does not feel that his power to love is boundless?And yet who does not feel that very love, though boundless, encompassed within the centre of his being, and moving not from love thought to love thought, nor from love deeds to other love deeds?And is not time even as love is, undivided and spaceless?But if in your thought you must measure time into seasons, let each season encircle all the other seasons,And let today embrace the past with remembrance and the future with longing.

There must be something strangely sacred in salt. It is in our tears and in the sea.

He who seeks ecstasy in love should not complain of suffering.

Life is not only merriment,It is desire and determination.

Generosity is giving more than you can, and pride is taking less than you need.

For thought is a bird of space, that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly.

Behind the veil of each night, there is a smiling dawn.

Sadness is but a wall between two gardens.

I too am my own forerunner, though I sit in the shadows of my trees and seem motionless.

Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit