The day before yesterday, my fellow blogger Superman introduced a writer new to me. He is spiritual . He is perceptive. More than that, he is a wise. But there are so many spiritual, perceptive and wise writers. What's so special? Not every spiritual, perceptive and wise writer can write so beautifully too! He is Khalil Gibran. So during lunchtime, I checked into his fans' website and discovered a number of quotes prepared by them with care, with devotion and with love. How can I not hasten to share this newfound joy with my fellow bloggers. For ease of reading, I shall arrange his quotable quotes under various headings which I hope will be congenial to my fellow bloggers. So here they are:
Love:
Love gives naught of itself and takes naught but from itself. Love possesses not nor would it be possessed. For love is sufficient unto love.
Love is resolution added to my being, linking my present to generations past and future.
I purified my lips with a sacred fire that I might speak of love, but when I opened my mouth to speak, I found myself mute.
Human kinds cling to earthly things, but I seek ever to embrace the torch of love so it will purify me by its fire and sear inhumanity from my heart.
Individuality
Give one another 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.
Giving
You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.
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 from those who work with joy.
Understanding
Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
No man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.
Be patient, for it is from doubt that knowledge is born.
One may not reach the dawn save by the path of the night.Too young am I and too outraged to be my freer self.
You are your own forerunner and the towers you have built are but the foundation of your giant-self. And that self too shall be a foundation.
Out of my deeper heart a bird rose and flew skywards/Higher and higher did it rise, yet larger and larger did it grow/At first it was just like a swallow, then a lark, then an eagle, then as vast as a spring cloud and then it filled the starry heavens/Out of my heart a bird flew skywards. And it waxed larger as it flew. Yet it left not my heart.
My existence, with all that I have revealed and hidden concerning it, appears to me like an atom in the sigh of a small child, a moment that trembles in a void stretching from Creation to Eternity.
Once I filled my hand with mist./Then I opened it and lo, the mist was a worm./And I closed and opened my hand again, and behold there was a bird./And again I closed and opened my hand, and in its hollow stood a man with a sad face, turned upward./And again I closed my hand, and when I opened it there was naught but mist./And I heard a song of exceeding sweetness.
It was but yesterday I thought myself a fragment quivering without rhythm in the sphere of life./Now I know that I am the sphere, and all life in rhythmic fragements moves within me.
Dreams
Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and the nights. But your ears thirst for the sound of your heart's knowledge. You would know in words that which you have always known in thought. You would touch with your fingers the naked body of your dreams.
Solitude
You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts; And when you can no longer dwell in the solitude of your heart, you live in your lips, and sound is a diversion and a pastime.
Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing. And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb. And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.
Timelessness
...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.
Yesterday we complained of time and feared it, but today, we love and embrace it.
We measure time according to the movement of countless suns; and they measure time by little machines in their their pockets. Now tell me, how could we ever meet at the same place and the same time?
My house says to me, "do not leave me, for here dwells your past."/And the road says to me,"Come and follow me,for I am your future."/And I say to both my house and my road, "I have no past, nor have I a future. If I stay here, there is a going in my staying; and if I go there is a staying in my going. Only love and death will change all things.
Regrets
...regrets is the beclouding of the mind and not its chastisement.
Beauty
People of Ophalese, beauty is life when life unveils her holy face. But you are life and you are the veil. Beauty is eternally gazing at itself in a mirror. But you are eternity and you are the mirror.
In God's field of Beauty, at the edge of the stream of life, I was imprisoned in the cage of laws made by man.
Everything of beauty that awakens my love and desire is a disgrace, according to man's conceptions; everything of goodness that I crave is but naught, according to his judgement.
Yesterday I was a happy shepherd looking upon his head as a merciful king looks with pleasure upon his contented subjects. Today I am a slave standing before my wealth, my wealth which robbed me of the beauty of life I once knew.
Beauty is that which attracts your soul, and that which loves to give and not to receive.
Happiness
Happiness is a vine that takes root and grows within the heart, never outside of it.
Religion
Your daily life is your temple and your religion.
Human being unite in destroying the temples of the spirit and co-operate in building the edifices of the body.
God
And if you would know God, be not therefore a solver of riddles. Rather look about you and you shall see Him with your children.
In the depths of your hopes and desires lies your silent knowledge of the beyond...
The first thought of God was an angel. The first word of God was a man.
My God, my aim and my fulfilment; I am thy yesterday and thou art my tomorrow. I am thy root in the earth and thou art my flower in the sky and together we grow before the face of the sun.
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 Infinite
I have floated in the universe of the infinite and flown in the upper air of the imaginary world. There I was close to the circle with its divine light; here, I am in the prison of matter.
It was but yesterday I thought myself a fragment quivering without rhythm in the spheres of life. Now I know that I am the sphere, and all life in rhythic fragments moves within me.
Humanity is a river of light running from the ex-eternity to eternity.
I am forever walking upon these shores,/Betwixt the sand and the foam,/The high tide will erase my footprints,/And the wind will blow away the foam./But the sea and shore will remain/Forever.
Suffering
...he who has never looked at suffering cannot claim to see joy.
Strange, the desire for certain pleasures is a part of my pain.
Failure
To judge you by your failures is to cast blame upon the seasons for their inconstancy.
Memory
Remembering is a form of meeting. Forgetfulness is a form of freedom.
Wonderful quotations ! Words of wisdom and most of all "love rules..." " Love rules... Out of nothing and yet onto something, Very magical and yet theatrical, Eager to possess and somehow lost... Rural and yet urban, Universal and yet personal, Little and yet infinite, Eat your love, ease your love, free it... Slipping away and yet sliding through..." Good night, my dear old friend ! Thanks again for your reading and quotations !
回覆刪除[版主回覆10/28/2010 23:42:00]My dear friend, love has always ruled. Otherwise, we wouldn't be here to wonder if that is the case! It's just that the conditions of modern life make it difficult to remember it any more!
Gibran was one of the literary figures I came into contact when I left school.
回覆刪除“The Prophet” (I read the Chinese translation : 先知 ) was his first book I read. I was quite captivated by his writings then and that sort of rekindled my enthusiasm in literature, which would have otherwise discontinued when I plunged into the mundane business world. Gibran has been one of my guiding lights. Thanks for bring him up.
These are some of the quotes I like in particular:
1) To judge you by your failures is to cast blame upon the seasons for their inconstancy.
2) Strange, the desire for certain pleasures is a part of my pain.
3) You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.
4) One may not reach the dawn save by the path of the night. Too young am I and too outraged to be my freer self.
5) Your daily life is your temple and your religion.
[版主回覆10/29/2010 12:14:00]Glad you like him and found him before me. As always, I'm a late developer. I make up in diligence what I lack in speed. After I read two or three of the quotations in his fans' blog, I knew there and then that he would be my author! Now I must go and buy some of his books and chew on them at my leisure.