"You cannot judge any man beyond your knowledge of him, and how small is your knowledge."

"They deem me mad because I will not sell my days for gold and I deem them mad because they think my days have a price."

"Much of your pain is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self."

"If the other person injures you you may forget the injury but if you injure him you will always remember."

"Life is but a sleep disturbed By dreaming."

"But you who walk facing the sun, what images drawn on the earth can hold you? You who travel with the wind, what weathervane shall direct your course? What man's law shall bind you if you break your yoke but upon no man's prison door? What laws shall you fear if you dance but stumble against no man's iron chains? And who is he that shall bring you to judgment if you tear off your garment yet leave it in no man's path? People of Orphalese, you can muffle the drum, and you can loosen the strings of the lyre, but who shall command the skylark not to sing?"

"But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.To know the pain of too much tenderness.To be wounded by your own understanding of love;And to bleed willingly and joyfully.To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;To rest at noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;To return home at eventide with gratitude;And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise on your lips."

"Let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And 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."

"For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and melt into the sun?"

"The tiny flame that lights up the human heart is like a blazing torch that comes down from heaven to light up the paths of mankind. For in one soul are contained the hopes and feelings of all Mankind."

"You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give."

"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."

"You are good in countless ways, and you are not evil when you are not good, you are only loitering and sluggard."

"Do not fear the thorns in your path, for they draw only corrupt blood."

"A sense of humour is a sense of proportion."

"Suffer not yet our eyes to hunger for your face."

"He who seeks ecstasy in love should not complain of suffering."

"Life without liberty is like a body without spirit."

"When you see a man led to prison say in your heart, "Mayhap he is escaping from a narrower prison." And when you see a man drunken say in your heart, "Mayhap he sought escape from something still more unbeautiful."

"Death changes nothing but the masks that cover our faces."

"Life is not only merriment,It is desire and determination."

"Life without love is like a tree without blossom and fruit."

"And even as each one of you stands alone in God's knowledge, so must each one of you be alone in his knowledge of God and in his understanding of the earth."

"Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield, upon your reason and your judgment wage war against your passion and your appetite."

"And let your board stand an altar on which the pure and the innocent of forest and plain are sacrificed for that which is purer and still more innocent in man."

"There must be something strangely sacred in salt. It is in our tears and in the sea."

"When love beckons to you, follow him,Though his ways are hard and steep.And when his wings enfold you yield to him,Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.And when he speaks to you believe in him,Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden."

"When you pray you rise to meet in the air those who are praying at that very hour, and whom save in prayer you may not meet."

"Verily the kindness that gazes upon itself in a mirror turns to stone,And a good deed that calls itself by tender names becomes the parent to a curse."

"There are those among you who seek the talkative through fear of being alone.The silence of aloneness reveals to their eyes their naked selves and they would escape.And there are those who talk, and without knowledge or forethought reveal a truth which they themselves do not understand.And there are those who have the truth within them, but they tell it not in words.In the bosom of such as these the spirit dwells in rhythmic silence."

"Shall I come to you, a boundless drop to a boundless ocean."

"Yesterday is but to-day's memory and to-morrow is to-day's dream."

"Perhaps time's definition of coal is the diamond."

"It is not a garment I cast off this day, but a skin that I tear with my own hands.Nor is it a thought I leave behind me, but a heart made sweet with hunger and with thirst."

"Your fear of death is but the trembling of the shepherd when he stands before the king whose hand is to be laid upon him in honour."

"Love one another, but make not a bond of love: let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup. give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music."

"To be modest in speaking truth is hypocrisy."

"Who can separate his faith from his actions or his belief from his occupations?"

"Yesterday was a beautiful tune on the lips of life and today is a silent secret."

"Some of you say, "Joy is greater than sorrow," and others say, "Nay, sorrow is the greater." But I say unto you, they are inseparable.Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed."

"When you reach the end of what you should know, you will be at the beginning of what you should sense."

"Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy."

"Your children are not your children. They are sons and daughters of the Life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts. For they have their own thoughts."

"Thus with my lips have I denounced you, while my heart, bleeding within me, called you tender names.It was love lashed by its own self that spoke. It was pride half slain that fluttered in the dust. It was my hunger for your love that raged from the housetop, while my own love, kneeling in silence, prayed your forgiveness."

"Oftentimes in denying yourself pleasure you do but store the desire in the recesses of your being.Who knows but that which seems omitted today, waits for tomorrow?Even your body knows its heritage and its rightful need and will not be deceived.And your body is the harp of your soul,And it is yours to bring forth sweet music from it or confused sounds."

"Do not blame a person for drinking lest he is trying to forget something more serious than drinking."

"You may give them your love but not your thougts, For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams."

"I love you, my brother, whoever you are - whether you worship in a church, kneel in your temple, or pray in your mosque. You and I are children of one faith, for the diverse paths of religion are fingers of the loving hand of the one supreme being, a hand extended to all, offering completeness of spirit to all, eager to receive all."

"If you cannot but weep when your soul summons you to prayer, she should spur you again and yet again, though weeping, until you shall come laughing."

"Tolerance is love sick with the sickness of haughtiness."