Showing posts with label Khalil Gibran quotes and poems. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Khalil Gibran quotes and poems. Show all posts

Inspiring quotes and poems celebrating femininity and womanhood by William Wordsworth,Victor Hugo ,Richard Bach,Osho and Khalil Gibran

Music:
Secret Garden-Sanctuary



Emmanuel Garant Art

And now I see with eye serene
The very pulse of the machine;
A being breathing thoughtful breath,
A traveller between life and death:
The reason firm, the temperate will,
Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill;
A perfect Woman, nobly plann'd
To warn, to comfort, and command;
And yet a Spirit still, and bright
With something of an angel light.
William Wordsworth


Richard Johnson Art

The soul gropes in search of a soul, and finds it. And that soul, found and proven, is a woman. A hand sustains you, it is hers; lips lightly touch your forehead, they are her lips; you hear breathing near you, it is she. To have her wholly, from her devotion to her pity, never to be left alone, to have that sweet shyness as, to lean on that unbending reed, to touch, Providence with your hands and be able to grasp it in your arms; God made palpable, what transport! The heart, that dark celestial flower, bursts into a mysterious bloom. You would not give up that shade for all the light in the world! The angel soul is there, forever there; if she goes away, it is only to return; she fades away in a dream and reappears in reality. You feel an approaching warmth, she is there. You overflow with serenity...; you are radiant in your darkness. And the thousand little cares! The trifles that are enormous in this void. The most ineffable accents of the womanly voice used to comfort you, and replacing for you the vanished universe! You are caressed through the soul. You see nothing but you feel yourself adored.
Victor Hugo, Les Misérables



Richard Johnson Art

To call woman the weaker sex is a libel; it is man's injustice to woman. If by strength is meant brute strength, then, indeed, is woman less brute than man. If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man's superior. Has she not greater intuition, is she not more self-sacrificing, has she not greater powers of endurance, has she not greater courage? Without her, man could not be. If nonviolence is the law of our being, the future is with woman. Who can make a more effective appeal to the heart than woman?
Mahatma Gandhi

Respect the feminine — it is higher, certainly higher, than the male qualities. ... the male mind has tried to repress the feminine and of course because the male is aggressive... he can repress it. The feminine is receptive, surrendering; it knows how to let go, it knows how to adjust, so it has become adjusted even to the male chauvinist attitude. The whole past of humanity is ugly and the reason is that we have not allowed the feminine qualities to blossom. So become more and more receptive, sensitive, creative, loving, dancing, singing — and that’s how you will go on becoming more and more meditative. And the more meditative you are, the more you will find feminine qualities blossoming in you. The moment the male energy becomes feminine a Buddha is born, a Christ is born.
Osho

We will have a more beautiful world if all women — and women are half of the world — are allowed to grow their talents, their genius. It is not a question at all… nobody is higher, nobody is lower. Women are women, men are men; they have differences, but differences don’t make anybody higher or lower. Their differences create their attraction.
Osho



Richrd Johnson Art

Your armor, it shields you from any woman who would destroy
you, sure enough. But unless you let it go, it will shield
you as well from the only one who can love you, nourish
you, save you from your own protection. There is one perfect woman for you. She is singular, not plural.
Richard Bach



... marvelling at her intelligence,and hearing the stillness
of sorrow. I felt an invisible hand drawing me to her.

Every visit gave me a new meaning to her beauty and a new
insight into her sweet spirit, Until she became a book whose
pages I could understand and whose praises I could sing,
but which I could never finish reading.

A woman whom Providence has provided with beauty
of spirit and body is a truth, at the same time both open
and secret, which we can understand only by love, and
touch only by virtue; and when we attempt to describe
such a woman she disappears like a vapor.
Khalil Gibran,From The White Torch



Richard Johnson Art

Writers and poets try to understand the truth about
woman. But until this day they have never understood
her heart because, looking upon her through the veil
of desire, they see nothing except the shape of her body.
Or they look upon her through a magnifying glass
of spite and find nothing in her but weakness and submission.
Khalil Gibran



A woman's heart
Khalil Gibran

A woman's heart will not change with time or season;
even if it dies eternally, it will never perish.
A woman's heart is like a field turned into a battleground;
after the trees are uprooted and the grass is burned and
the rocks bones and skulls, it is calm and is silent as if
nothing has happened; for the spring and autumn come at their intervals and resume their work.

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Excerpts from"Your Thought and Mine" by Khalil Gibran,Excerpts from "song of the open road" by Walt whitman,Inspiring quotes by Henry W Longfellow

Music:
Richard Clayderman:te Amo



Gary Morrow Art

Excerpts from "Your Thought and Mine"
Khalil Gibran

Your thought is a tree rooted deep in the soil of tradition
and whose branches grow in the power of continuity.
My thought is a cloud moving in the space. It turns into
drops which, as they fall, form a brook that sings its way
into the sea. Then it rises as vapour into the sky.

Your thought is a fortress that neither gale nor the lightning
can shake. My thought is a tender leaf that sways in every
direction and finds pleasure in its swaying.
Your thought is an ancient dogma that cannot change you nor
can you change it.
My thought is new, and it tests me and I test it morn and eve.
You have your thought and I have mine.

Your thought allows you to believe in the unequal contest
of the strong against the weak, and in the tricking of
the simple by the subtle ones. My thought creates in me
the desire to till the earth with my hoe, and harvest
the crops with my sickle, and build my home with stones
and mortar, and weave my raiment with woollen and linen threads.

Your thought urges you to marry wealth and notability.
Mine commends self-reliance. Your thought advocates fame
and show. Mine counsels me and implores me to cast aside
notoriety and treat it like a grain of sand cast upon
the shore of eternity.

Your thought instils in your heart arrogance and superiority.
Mine plants within me love for peace and the desire for
independence. Your thought begets dreams of palaces with
furniture of sandalwood studded with jewels, and beds
made of twisted silk threads.

My thought speaks softly in my ears,Be clean in body and
spirit even if you have nowhere to lay your head. Your
thought makes you aspire to titles and offices.
Mine exhorts me to humble service.
You have your thought and I have mine.

Your thought is social science, a religious and political
dictionary. Mine is simple axiom. Your thought speaks of
the beautiful woman, the ugly, the virtuous, the prostitute,
the intelligent, and the stupid. Mine sees in every woman
a mother, a sister, or a daughter of every man.

The subjects of your thought are thieves, criminals, and
assassins. Mine declares that thieves are the creatures
of monopoly, criminals are the offspring of tyrants, and
assassins are akin to the slain. Your thought describes
laws, courts, judges, punishments. Mine explains that when
man makes a law, he either violates it or obeys it.
If there is a basic law, we are all one before it. He who
disdains the mean is himself mean. He who vaunts his scorn
of the sinful vaunts his disdain of all humanity.

Your thought concerns the skilled, the artist, the intellectual,
the philosopher, the priest. Mine speaks of the loving and
the affectionate, the sincere, the honest, the forthright,
the kindly, and the martyr.

In your thought there are the rich, the poor, and the beggared.
My thought holds that there are no riches but life; that we are
all beggars, and no benefactor exists save life herself.
You have your thought and I have mine.

Your thought differentiates between pragmatist and idealist,
between the part and the whole, between the mystic and materialist.
Mine realizes that life is one and its weights, measures and
tables do not coincide with your weights, measures and tables.
He whom you suppose an idealist may be a practical man.
You have your thought and I have mine.

Your thought is interested in ruins and museums, mummies and
petrified objects. But mine hovers in the ever-renewed haze
and clouds. Your thought is enthroned on skulls. Since you
take pride in it, you glorify it too.

My thought wanders in the obscure and distant valleys.
Your thought trumpets while you dance. Mine prefers
the anguish of death to your music and dancing.
Your thought is the thought of gossip and false pleasure.
Mine is the thought of him who is lost in his own country,
of the alien in his own nation, of the solitary among his
kinfolk and friends.
You have your thought and I have mine.


Michael and Inessa Garmash Painting

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more,
need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
Strong and content I travel the open road.

(Still here I carry my old delicious burdens,
I carry them, men and women, I carry them with
me wherever I go,
I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them,
I am fill’d with them, and I will fill them in return.
WALT WHITMAN,excerpts from "Song of the Open Road"


Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each tomorrow
Find us farther than today.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sand of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solenm main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us then be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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Khalil Gibran on Love & Marriage

Music:
Secret Garden-Adagio


On Love
Khalil Gibran


Richard Johnson Art

When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams
as the north wind lays waste the garden.

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you.
Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your
tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,So shall he descend
to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.

Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that
you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast.

All these things shall love do unto you that you may
know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge
become a fragment of Life's heart.

But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace
and love's pleasure,Then it is better for you that you
cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not
all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.

When you love you should not say, "God is in my heart,"
but rather, "I am in the heart of God."
And think not you can direct the course of love, for love,
if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires,
let these be your desires:

To melt and be like a running brook that sings
its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks
for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your
heart and a song of praise upon your lips.


On Marriage
Khalil Gibran

You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.
You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days.
Ay, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.
But 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.

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DEAD ARE MY PEOPLE by Khalil Gibran


Bcharri,lebanon(Birthplace of Khalil Gibran)

DEAD ARE MY PEOPLE
Khalil Gibran

Kahlil Gibran wrote the following during the First World War (1914 to 1918), a time when many places, including Lebanon, were struck by famine. At the time of writing he was living in Boston in the United States.

Dead are my people, gone are my people, but I exist yet, lamenting them in my solitude. Dead are my friends, and in their death my life is naught but great disaster. The knolls of my country are submerged by tears and blood, for my people and my beloved are gone, and I am here living as I did when my people and my beloved were enjoying life and the bounty of life, and when the hills of my country were blessed and engulfed by the light of the sun.

My people died from hunger, and he who did not perish from starvation was butchered with the sword; and I am here in this distant land, roaming amongst a joyful people who sleep upon soft beds, and smile at the days while the days smile upon them.

My people died a painful and shameful death, and here am I living in plenty and in peace. This is deep tragedy ever enacted upon the stage of my heart; few would care to witness this drama, for my people are as birds with broken wings, left behind the flock.

If I were hungry and living amid my famished people, and persecuted among my oppressed countrymen, the burden of the black days would be lighter upon my restless dreams, and the obscurity of the night would be less dark before my hollow eyes and my crying heart and my wounded soul. For he who shares with his people their sorrow and agony will feel a supreme comfort created only by suffering in sacrifice. And he will be at peace with himself when he dies innocent with his fellow innocents.

But I am not living with my hungry and persecuted people who are walking in the procession of death toward martyrdom. I am here beyond the broad seas living in the shadow of tranquillity, and in the sunshine of peace. I am afar from the pitiful arena and the distressed, and cannot be proud of ought, not even of my own tears.
What can an exiled son do for his starving people, and of what value unto them is the lamentation of an absent poet?

Were I an ear of corn grown in the earth of my country, the hungry child would pluck me and remove with my kernels the hand of Death form his soul. Were I a ripe fruit in the gardens of my country, the starving women would gather me and sustain life. Were I a bird flying the sky of my country, my hungry brother would hunt me and remove with the flesh of my body the shadow of the grave from his body. But, alas! I am not an ear of corn grown in the plains of Syria, nor a ripe fruit in the valleys of Lebanon; this is my disaster, and this is my mute calamity which brings humiliation before my soul and before the phantoms of the night. This is the painful tragedy which tightens my tongue and pinions my arms and arrests me usurped of power and of will and of action. This is the curse burned upon my forehead before God and man.

And oftentimes they say unto me, the disaster of your country is but naught to calamity of the world, and the tears and blood shed by your people are as nothing to the rivers of blood and tears pouring each day and night in the valleys and plains of the earth."

Yes, but the death of my people is a silent accusation; it is a crime conceived by the heads of the unseen serpents. it is a sceneless tragedy. And if my people had attacked the despots and oppressors and died rebels, I would have said, "Dying for freedom is nobler than living in the shadow of weak submission, for he who embraces death with the sword of Truth in his hand will eternalize with the Eternity of Truth, for Life is weaker than Death and Death is weaker than Truth.

If my nation had partaken in the war of all nations and had died in the field of battle, I would say that the raging tempest had broken with its might the green branches; and strong death under the canopy of the tempest is nobler than slow perishment in the arms of senility. But there was no rescue from the closing jaws. My people dropped and wept with the crying angels.

If an earthquake had torn my country asunder and the earth had engulfed my people into its bosom, I would have said, "A great and mysterious law has been moved by the will of divine force, and it would be pure madness if we frail mortals endeavoured to probe its deep secrets." But my people did not die as rebels; they were not killed in the field of battle; nor did the earthquake shatter my country and subdue them. Death was their only rescuer, and starvation their only spoils.

My people died on the cross. They died while their hands stretched toward the East and West, while the remnants of their eyes stared at the blackness of the firmament. They died silently, for humanity had closed its ears to their cry. They died because they did not befriend their enemy. They died because they loved their neighbours. They died because they placed trust in all humanity. They died because they did not oppress the oppressors. They died because they were the crushed flowers, and not the crushing feet. They died because they were peace makers. They perished from hunger in a land rich with milk and honey. They died because monsters of hell arose and destroyed all that their fields grew, and devoured the last provisions in their bins. They died because the vipers and sons of vipers spat out poison into the space where the Holy Cedars and the roses and the jasmine breathe their fragrance.

My people and your people, my Syrian Brothers, are dead. What can be done for those who are dying? Our lamentations will not satisfy their hunger, and our tears will not quench their thirst; what can we do to save them between the iron paws of hunger? My brother, the kindness which compels you to give a part of your life to any human who is in the shadow of losing his life is the only virtue which makes you worthy of the light of day and the peace of the night. Remember, my brother, that the coin which you drop into the withered hand stretching toward you is the only golden chain that binds your rich heart to the loving heart of God.

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Insightful quotes on Bigotry, fanaticism and truth


There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves.
George Gordon Byron

What a sad era when it is easier to smash an atom than a prejudice.
Albert Einstein

The worst vice of a fanatic is his sincerity.
Oscar Wilde

Fanatics in power and the funnel of a tornado have this in common the narrow path in which they move is marked by violence and destruction.
Oscar Ostlund

There is nobody as enslaved as the fanatic, the person in whom one impulse, one value, has assumed ascendancy over all others.
Milton R. Sapirstein

The fanatic is incorruptible: if he kills for an idea, he can just as well get himself killed for one; in either case, tyrant or martyr, he is a monster.
Rmile.M.Cioran

As any action or posture long continued will distort and disfigure the limbs; so the mind likewise is crippled and contracted by perpetual application to the same set of ideas.
Samuel Johnson

There is no cruelty so inexorable and unrelenting as that which proceeds from a bigoted and presumptuous supposition of doing service to God. The victim of the fanatical persecutor will find that the stronger the motives he can urge for mercy are, the weaker will be his chance for obtaining it, for the merit of his destruction will be supposed to rise in value in proportion as it is effected at the expense of every feeling both of justice and of humanity.
Charles Caleb Colton

Truth is like the stars; it does not appear except from behind obscurity of the night. Truth is like all beautiful things in the world; it does not disclose its desirability except to those who first feel the influence of falsehood. Truth is a deep kindness that teaches us to be content in our everyday life and share with the people the same happiness.
Khalil GIbran

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Kahlil Gibran Romantic Love Letters


Leonid Afremov Art

Among intelligent people the surest basis for marriage is friendship- the sharing of real interests- the ability to fight out ideas together and understand each other's thoughts and dreams.

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.

You listen to so much more than I can say. You hear consciousness. You go with me where the words I say can't carry you.

We are expression of earth, and of life - not separate individuals only. We cannot get enough away from the earth to see the earth and ourselves as separates. We move with its great movements and our growth is part of its great growth.

That deepest thing, that recognition, that knowledge, that sense of kinship began the first time I saw you, and it is the same now - only a thousand times deeper and tenderer. I shall love you to eternity. I loved you long before we met in this flesh. I knew that when I first saw you. It was destiny. We are together like this and nothing can shake us apart.

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A Poet's Voice by Khalil Gibran:Part Three,Four and conclusion.Inspiring poems on love and humanism

A Poet's Voice
Part Three
Khalil Gibran

Music:
The shallows-Adam Hurst



Thou art my brother because you are a human,
and we both are sons of one Holy Spirit;
we are equal and made of the same earth.
You are here as my companion along the path of life, and my aid in understanding the meaning of hidden Truth. You are a human, and, that fact sufficing, I love you as a brother. You may speak of me as you choose, for Tomorrow shall take you away and will use your talk as evidence for his judgment, and you shall receive justice.

You may deprive me of whatever I possess, for my greed instigated the amassing of wealth and you are entitled to my lot if it will satisfy you.
You may do unto me whatever you wish, but you shall not be able to touch my Truth.
You may shed my blood and burn my body, but you cannot kill or hurt my spirit.

You may tie my hands with chains and my feet with shackles, and put me in the dark prison, but who shall not enslave my thinking, for it is free, like the breeze in the spacious sky.

You are my brother and I love you. I love you worshipping in your church, kneeling in your temple, and praying in your mosque. You and I and all are children of one religion, for the varied paths of religion are but the fingers of the loving hand of the Supreme Being, extended to all, offering completeness of spirit to all, anxious to receive all.

I love you for your Truth, derived from your knowledge; that Truth which I cannot see because of my ignorance. But I respect it as a divine thing, for it is the deed of the spirit. Your Truth shall meet my Truth in the coming world and blend together like the fragrance of flowers and becoming one whole and eternal Truth, perpetuating and living in the eternity of Love and Beauty.

I love you because you are weak before the strong oppressor, and poor before the greedy rich. For these reasons I shed tears and comfort you; and from behind my tears I see you embraced in the arms of Justice, smiling and forgiving your persecutors. You are my brother and I love you.

A Poet's Voice
Part Four
Khalil Gibran


The soul believes in the power of knowledge and justice over dark ignorance; it denies the authority that supplies the swords to defend and strengthen ignorance and oppression - that authority which destroyed Babylon and shook the foundation of Jerusalem and left Rome in ruins. It is that which made people call criminals great men; made writers respect their names; made historians relate the stories of their inhumanity in manner of praise.

The only authority I obey is the knowledge of guarding and acquiescing in the Natural Law of Justice.
What justice does authority display when it kills the killer? When it imprisons the robber? When it descends on a neighborhood country and slays its people? What does justice think of the authority under which a killer punishes the one who kills, and a thief sentences the one who steals?

You are my brother, and I love you; and Love is justice with its full intensity and dignity. If justice did not support my love for you, regardless of your tribe and community, I would be a deceiver concealing the ugliness of selfishness behind the outer garment of pure love.

A Poet's Voice
Conclusion
Khalil Gibran


Lee Bogle Art

I came to say a word and I shall say it now. But if death
prevents its uttering, it will be said tomorrow, for tomorrow
never leaves a secret in the book of eternity.

I came to live in the glory of love and the light of beauty, which are the reflections of God. I am here living, and the people are unable to exile me from the domain of life for they know I will live in death. If they pluck my eyes I will hearken to the murmers of love and the songs of beauty.

If they close my ears I will enjoy the touch of the breeze mixed with the incebse of love and the fragrance of beauty.
If they place me in a vacuum, I will live together with my
soul, the child of love and beauty.
I came here to be for all and with all, and what I do today
in my solitude will be echoed by tomorrow to the people.
What I say now with one heart will be said tomorrow by many hearts.

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