Timeless wisdom: Some of my favorite quotes (frequently updated)
Khalil Gibran
"Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself."
"Let there be spaces in your togetherness, and let the winds of the heavens dance between you."
"And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair."
"For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?"
"I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers."
Ibn Arabi
"Be a mine of knowledge, and you will be given the means to obtain what you do not know."
"Do not praise your own faith exclusively so that you disbelieve all the rest. If you do this, you will miss much good. Nay, you will miss the whole truth of the matter."
"All things are reflections of the Divine Names of God."
Solitude
"The mind is sharper and keener in seclusion and uninterrupted solitude. No big laboratory is needed in which to think. Originality thrives in seclusion free of outside influences beating upon us to cripple the creative mind. Be alone, that is the secret of invention; be alone, that is when ideas are born." - Nikola Tesla
"In solitude, the mind gains strength and learns to lean upon itself." - Laurence Sterne
"Solitude is not the absence of company, but the moment when our soul is free to speak to us and help us decide what to do with our life." - Paulo Coelho
"The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself." - Michel de Montaigne
The necessity of both sides: Of Good and Evil, Of Darkness and Light.
Existence itself is characterized by a necessity for opposing characteristics; A flow between good and evil, between heights and depths, and between darkness and light. This flow is not random, not arbitrary, but the very foundation upon which creation is able to manifest. in essence, counterparts contain the other’s substance; death is the substance of life and life is the substance of death. The former and the latter contain each other’s seed. It is a principle of all dualities: Nothing exists in isolation.
One should carefully observe his tendency to strictly operate according to the laws of one pole, or to let it completely seduce and rule his mind. If man’s life is like a mountain, he should spend it traveling between it’s base and peak. What awaits him at the base is of equal value to what awaits him at the peak. Harmony is a product of equilibrium - a knowledge of both earth and sky - and man’s wisdom will forever be incomplete without the materials of both realms.
Our sensory organs reveal this world to us, delivering information we can interpret through the power of our minds. Some of us go to great lengths to avoid what we think of as the most wicked and unfortunate types of sensations. Accordingly, there is an ongoing search for pleasurable states, and an endless avoidance or rejection of painful states in both the physical and emotional senses. As a consequence, there becomes a dismissal of half of life’s divine fabric, for both good and evil are woven with the same thread. What we often fail to see is that what we’re truly seeking will only be found by journeying into the very things we’ve been trying to avoid. That is why we still feel incomplete even after obtaining our pleasures.
Do not let your serenity depend on circumstance… therein lies the secret of unshakable contentment. May each of us open our hearts and minds to the whole of existence and in return realize the magnificence of our connection to the universe.
The wisdom of Kahlil Gibran
Part one : The Coming of The Ship
“The sea that calls all things unto her calls me, and I must embark.
For to stay, though the hours burn in the night, is to freeze and crystalize and be bound in a mould.
Fain would I take with me all that is here. But how shall I?
A voice cannot carry the tongue and the lips that gave it wings. Alone must it seek the ether.
And alone and without his nest shall the eagle fly across the sun.”
Even though we may seek to maintain positive circumstances, we are not, by our nature, stationary creatures.
For a time we may be like trees and plants, stationed and rooted to an extent, yet we ourselves are not rooted into the earth, firmly bound by soil.
We are travelers; pilgrims and explorers of a vast planet on which there are infinite unknowns.
Whereas the plant grows in its place, we must depart from our place to grow.
The boat in the harbour is tied to what keeps it in place, but if it’s to ever sail in the wind, it must leave that waveless, windless harbour in its shadow.
the sailor who reaches the mountains must abandon his boat at the shore should he ever hope to mount the summit.
What were once our greatest tools may soon become our greatest shackles lest we learn the art of parting ways.
In taking a breath, we must also let it go to receive life in return.
Let us not live as caterpillars, remaining asleep in a chrysalis so as to never fly above flowering fields.
it’s only when the constraints of its own seed are severed that a tree can spread its branches into the heavens.
life awaits us the moment we learn to set ourselves free from our impulse to cling to it.