Verified Quotes
Every quote on this page is verified against the named source work.
Kahlil Gibran, Lebanese-American poet and mystic whose meditations on love, loss, and letting go have been read at, gets quoted everywhere and sourced almost nowhere. The 17 quotes below are different: each one is checked word for word against the cited work, starting with The Prophet, not copied from aggregator sites that pass misattributions along. The source is named under every line, so you can trace each quote back to the page it came from.
Read Kahlil Gibran's full profile and how they reason →12 verified quotes
On raising kids without owning their future:
Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
On choosing work you can pour yourself into:
Work is love made visible.Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
On realizing what someone meant to you after they are gone:
Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
On whether grief and future joy are connected:
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
On generosity that costs you something:
You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
On holding your beliefs without certainty:
Say not, I have found the truth, but rather, I have found a truth.Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
On losing your sense of self in love:
When you love you should not say, God is in my heart, but rather, I am in the heart of God.Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
On giving a partner space within commitment:
Love one another, but make not a bond of love: let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
Deciding how much space to keep in a marriage that still wants closeness:
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.Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
Looking for what a painful loss might still be teaching you:
Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
Deciding whether freedom means avoiding hardship or rising above it:
You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care nor your nights without a want and a grief, but rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked and unbound.Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
Deciding whether ordinary work can carry the same meaning as a calling:
Your daily life is your temple and your religion.Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
4 verified quotes
On what hardship leaves behind:
Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.Kahlil Gibran, Sand and Foam
On being misunderstood while trying to connect:
Half of what I say is meaningless; but I say it so that the other half may reach you.Kahlil Gibran, Sand and Foam
Deciding whether refusing help from others is generosity or just pride:
Generosity is giving more than you can, and pride is taking less than you need.Kahlil Gibran, Sand and Foam
Choosing a fuller life now over a longer, more cautious one:
The significant thing is not to live forever, but to live.Kahlil Gibran, Sand and Foam
1 verified quote
Deciding whether to pursue a love that defies convention:
Love is the only freedom in the world because it so elevates the spirit that the laws of humanity and the phenomena of nature do not alter its course.Kahlil Gibran, The Broken Wings