Quotes from THE PROPHET ... Khalil Gibran

You delight in laying down laws
Yet you delight more in breaking them ...
Like children playing by the ocean who build sand towers
With constancy and then destroy them with laughter ...

It is when your spirit wandering upon wind
That you, alone and unguarded
Commit a wrong 
Unto others and therefore unto yourself ...

And when one of you falls down 
He falls for those behind him ...
A caution against the stumbling stone ...
Ay, and he falls for those ahead of him 
Who, though faster and surer of foot
Yet removed not the stumbling stone ...

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 ...

And think not you can direct the course of love ...
For love, if it finds you worthy
Directs your course ...

It is well to give when asked ...
But it is better to give unasked ...

For in truth it is life that gives unto life ...
While you, who deem yourself a giver ...
Are but a witness ...

Verily the lust for comfort, murders the passion of the soul ...
And then walks grinning in the funeral ...

You soul is oftentimes a battlefield 
Upon which your reason and your judgement wage war 
Against your passion and your appetite ...

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

And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter
And sharing of pleasures ... 
For in the dew of little things ... 
The heart finds its morning ... 
And is refreshed ...

You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts ...
And when you can no longer dwell in the solitude of your heart ...
You live in your lips 
And sound is a diversion and a pastime ...
And in much of your talking, thinking is half murdered ...
For thought is a bird of space ... 
That in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings 
But cannot fly ...