Khalil Gibran

The most pitiful among men is he who turns his dreams into silver and gold.

Yesterday is but today's memory, and tomorrow is today's dream.

If my survival caused another to perish, then death would be sweeter and more beloved.

For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.

Death most resembles a prophet who is without honor in his own land or a poet who is a stranger among his people.

If you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work.

Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love.

Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.

Of life's two chief prizes, beauty and truth, I found the first in a loving heart and the second in a laborer's hand.

Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens.

I wash my hands of those who imagine chattering to be knowledge, silence to be ignorance, and affection to be art.

Art is a step from what is obvious and well-known toward what is arcane and concealed.