Khalil Gibran Quotes

I figure I basically am a ghost. I think we all are.

Consider in what condition both in body and soul a man should be when he is overtaken by death; and consider the shortness of life, the boundless abyss of time past and future, the feebleness of all matter.

A violent wind does not outlast the morning; a squall of rain does not outlast the day. Such is the course of Nature. And if Nature herself cannot sustain her efforts long, how much less can man!

Tomorrow I too – this feeling and thinking soul, the universe I am to myself – yes, tomorrow I too will be someone who no longer walks these streets, someone others will evoke with a vague: 'I wonder what's become of him?” And everything I do, everything I feel, everything I experience, will be just one less passer-by on the daily streets of some city or other.

For mortal kind taketh thought only for the day, and hath no more surety than the shadow of smoke.

Your death and my death are mainly of importance to ourselves. The black plumes will be stripped off our hearses within the hour; tears will dry, hurt hearts close again, our graves grow level with the church-yard, and although we are away, the world wags on. It does not miss us; and those who are near us, when the first strangeness of vacancy wears off, will not miss us much either.

All of our miseries are nothing but attachment. Our whole ignorance and darkness is a strange combination of a thousand and one attachments. And we are attached to things which will be taken away by the time of death, or even perhaps before. You may be very much attached to money but you can go bankrupt tomorrow. You may be very much attached to your power and position, your presidency, your prime ministership, but they are like soap bubbles. Today they are here, tomorrow not even a trace will be left.

How odd to watch a mortal kindle / Then to dwindle day by day / Knowing their bright souls are tinder / And the wind will have its way

And the dream that our mind had sketched in haste Shall others continue, but never complete. For none upon earth can achieve his scheme; The best as the worst are futile here: We wake at the self-same point of the dream, All is here begun, and finished elsewhere.

Life is a stream On which we strew Petal by petal the flower of our heart; The end lost in dream, They float past our view, We only watch their glad, early start. Freighted with hope, Crimsoned with joy, We scatter the leaves of our opening rose; Their widening scope, Their distant employ, We never shall know. And the stream as it flows Sweeps them away, Each one is gone Ever beyond into infinite ways. We alone stay While years hurry on, The flower fared forth, though its fragrance still stays.

A man finds himself, to his great astonishment, suddenly existing, after thousands and thousands of years of non-existence: he lives for a little while; and then, again, comes an equally long period when he must exist no more. The heart rebels against this, and feels that it cannot be true.

Once, once for all, if you would save your heart from breaking, learn this lesson once for all you must cease, in this world, to believe in the eternity of any creed or form at all. Whatever grows in time is a child of time, and is born and lives, and dies at its appointed day like ourselves.

You're dying every minute, but you won't die yet.

The whole world's a bottle, And life's but a dram, When the bottle gets empty, It sure ain't worth a damn.

Alas, poor men, their destiny. When all goes well a shadow will overthrow it. If it be unkind one stroke of a wet sponge wipes all the picture out.

Your life feels different on you, once you greet death and understand your heart's position. You wear your life like a garment from the mission bundle sale ever after - lightly because you realize you never paid nothing for it, cherishing because you know you won't ever come by such a bargain again.

Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits and Are melted into air, into thin air: And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.

Impermanence is very important, crucial for life. That is why instead of complaining about impermanence you have to say "Long live impermanence!"

And can eternity belong to me, Poor pensioner on the bounties of an hour?

If there's another thing that sportswriting teaches you, it is that there are no transcendent themes in life. In all cases things are here and they're over, and that has to be enough.

We are fastened to a dying animal.

Beauty is at its most poignant when the cold hand of Death holds poised to wither it imminently.

All is ephemeral - fame and the famous as well.