Kahlil Gibran

Your clothes conceal much of your beauty, yet they hide not the unbeautiful.

True beauty is a rayThat springs from the sacred depths of the soul,and illuminates the body, just as lifesprings from the kernel of a stone andgives colour and scent to a flower.

Let me, O let me bathe my soul in colours; let me swallow the sunset and drink the rainbow.

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.

The professors in the academy say, __o not make the model more beautiful than she is,_ and my soul whispers, __ if you could only paint the model as beautiful as she really is.

Men who do not forgive women their little faults will never enjoy their great virtues.

Tolerance is love sick with the sickness of haughtiness.

For how can a tyrant rule the free and the proud, but for a tyranny in their own freedom and a shame in their own pride?

But you who walk facing the sun, what images drawn on the earth can hold you? You who travel with the wind, what weathervane shall direct your course? What man's law shall bind you if you break your yoke but upon no man's prison door? What laws shall you fear if you dance but stumble against no man's iron chains? And who is he that shall bring you to judgment if you tear off your garment yet leave it in no man's path? People of Orphalese, you can muffle the drum, and you can loosen the strings of the lyre, but who shall command the skylark not to sing?

And my heart bled within me; for you can only be free when even the desire of seeking freedom becomes a harness to you, and when you cease to speak of freedom as a goal and a fullfilment. you should be free indeed when your days are not without care nor your nights without a word and a grief, but rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked unbound.

Life without liberty is like a body without spirit.

I have found both freedom and safety in my madness; the freedom of loneliness and the safety from being understood, for those who understand us enslave something in us.

Forgetfulness is a form of freedom.

When you were a wandering desire in the mist, I too was there, a wandering desire. Then we sought one another, and out of our eagerness dreams were born. And dreams were time limitless, and dreams were space without measure.

A woman protested saying, "Of course it was a righteous war. My son fell in it.".

And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit. For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable is caught.

For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill? Seek him always with hours to live.For it is his to fill your need, but not your emptiness.And in th sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.

Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity.