Kahili Gibran is a writer and poet most famously known for his book “The Prophet” in which a Prophet named Almustafa is leaving his city of Orphalese where he has lived for 12 years. Before he is about to board the ship, he is asked questions by the townspeople. He responds, sharing wisdom on love, marriage, children, giving, eating and drinking, work, joy and sorrow, houses, clothes, buying and selling, crime and punishment, laws, freedom, reason and passion, pain, self-knowledge, teaching, friendship, talking, time, good and evil, prayer, pleasure, beauty, religion, and death.
Although this is the most famous of Gibran’s work he has written 19 books and 16 poem collections- below are a compilation of 15 quotes from The Prophet and other works that can teach us about self love and acceptance.
- “You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts.”
- “If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. If they don’t, they never were.”
- “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.”
- “Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.”
- “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.”
- “Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart.”
- “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.”
- “And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair”
- “Tenderness and kindness are not signs of weakness and despair, but manifestations of strength and resolution.”
- “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.”
- “To belittle, you have to be little.”
- “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.”
- “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.”
- “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.”
- “I slept and I dreamed that life is all joy. I woke and I saw that life is all service. I served and I saw that service is joy.”
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I am Luke Miller the author of this article, and creator of Potential For Change. I like to blend psychology and spirituality to help you create more happiness in your life.Grab a copy of my free 33 Page Illustrated eBook- Psychology Meets Spirituality- Secrets To A Supercharged Life You Control Here