Kahlil Gibran

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.

I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers.

You ask me how I became a madman. It happened thus: One day, long before many gods were born, I woke from a deep sleep and found all my masks were stolen, the seven masks I have fashioned and worn in seven lives, I ran maskless through the crowded streets shouting, "Thieves, thieves, the cursed thieves." Men and women laughed at me and some ran to their houses in fear of me.

When I am silent, I have thunder hidden inside.

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.

I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.

The eye of a human being is a microscope, which makes the world seem bigger than it really is.

Love is trembling happiness.

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.

I existed from all eternity and, behold, I am here; and I shall exist till the end of time, for my being has no end.

I have learned so much from God that I can no longer call myself a Christian, a Hindu, a Muslim, a Buddhist, a Jew.

I love you when you bow in your mosque, kneel in your temple, pray in your church. For you and I are sons of one religion, and it is the spirit.