Lebanese Writer, Painter & Sculptor
Many of Gibran’s works are illustrated with his own visionary drawings, some of which are displayed in the Gibran Museum in Bsharri, Lebanon and the Telfair Academy in Georgia, USA.
Extracts:
You are rich in wisdom,
But this body is poor in understanding.
You do not compromise,
And he does not obey.
This, my Soul, is extreme suffering
The professors in the academy say, "Do not make the model more beautiful than she is," and my soul whispers, "O if you could only paint the model as beautiful as she really is"
Let me, O let me bathe my soul in colours; let me swallow the sunset and drink the rainbow.
When I am a stranger in a large city I like to sleep in different rooms, eat in different places, walk through unknown streets, and watch the unknown people who pass. I love to be the solitary traveller!
The most wonderful thing, Mary, is that you and I are always walking together, hand in hand, in a strangely beautiful world, unknown to other people. We both stretch one hand to receive from Life – and Life is generous indeed.
If I can open a new corner in a man’s own heart to him I have not lived in vain. Life itself is the thing, not joy or pain or happiness or unhappiness. To hate is as good as to love – an enemy may be as good as a friend. Live for yourself – live your life. Then you are most truly the friend of man.
His love is as restful as Nature itself. He has no standard for you to conform to, no choice about you, but is simply with your reality, just as Nature is. You are real, so is he: the two realities love each other – voila!
What the soul knows is often unknown to the man who has a soul. We are infinitely more than we think.
When the hand of Life is heavy and night songless, it is the time for love and trust. And how light the hand life becomes and how songful the night, when one is loving and trusting all.
Sometimes you have not even begun to speak – and I am at the end of what you are saying.
If I accept the sunshine and warmth I must also accept the thunder and lightning.
Follow your heart. Your heart is the right guide in everything big. Mine is so limited. What you want to do is determined by that divine element that is in each of us.
I am so happy in your happiness. To you happiness is a form of freedom, and of all the people I know you should be the freest. Surely you have earned this happiness and this freedom. Life cannot be but kind and sweet to you. You have been so sweet and kind to life.
I care about your happiness just as you care about mine. I could not be at peace if you were not.
Among intelligent people the surest basis for marriage is friendship – the sharing of real interests- the ability to fight out ideas together and understand each other’s thoughts and dreams.
What difference does it make, whether you live in a big city or in a community of homes? The real life is within.
Marriage doesn’t give one any rights in another person except such rights that a person gives – nor any freedom except the freedom which that person gives.
The trees were budding, the birds were singing – the grass was wet – the whole earth was shining. And suddenly I was the trees and the flowers and the birds and the grass – and there was no I at all.
No human relation gives one possession in another – every two souls are absolutely different. In friendship or in love, the two side by side raise hands together to find what one cannot reach alone.
tango's space 
