The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.

Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life.

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

Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.

Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart.

Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing toward what will be.

To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but at what he aspires to.

Generosity is giving more than you can, and pride is taking less than you need.

Trust in dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.

Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself. Love possesses not nor would it be possessed.

Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, and though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

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

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

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.

Let there be spaces in your togetherness, and let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

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.

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

Generosity is giving more than you can, and pride is taking less than you need.

Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror. But you are eternity and you are the mirror.

Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.

Faith is an oasis in the heart which will never be reached by the caravan of thinking.

Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing toward what will be.

If you reveal your secrets to the wind, you should not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees.

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.

And what is it to work with love? It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.

It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house.

Say not, 'I have found the truth,' but rather, 'I have found a truth.'

Say not, 'I have found the path of the soul.' Say rather, 'I have met the soul walking upon my path.'

For the soul walks upon all paths. The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed.

The astronomer may speak to you of his understanding of space, but he cannot give you his understanding.

The musician may sing to you of the rhythm which is in all space, but he cannot give you the ear which arrests the rhythm nor the voice that echoes it.

If the teacher is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind.

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.

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.

Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself. 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 the 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 upon your lips.

Half of what I say is meaningless; but I say it so that the other half may reach you.

Tenderness and kindness are not signs of weakness and despair, but manifestations of strength and resolution.

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.

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.

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 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.

When you meet your friend on the roadside or in the marketplace, let the spirit in you move your lips and direct your tongue.

Let the voice within your voice speak to the ear of his ear; For his soul will keep the truth of your heart even as the taste of the wine is remembered.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness; For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.

Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.

The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple, among his followers, gives not of his wisdom but rather of his faith and his lovingness.

To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but at what he aspires to.

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

A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle.

Perplexity is the beginning of knowledge.

We choose our joys and our sorrows long before we experience them.

Trees are poems that the earth writes upon the sky. We fell them down and turn them into paper, that we may record our emptiness.

If you sing of beauty though alone in the heart of the desert you will have an audience.

Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.

Farewell to you and the youth I have spent with you. It was but yesterday we met in a dream.

A traveler am I and a navigator, and every day I discover a new region within my soul.

I awoke from my sleep to find that all my masks had been stolen... and for the first time the sun kissed my naked face.

My friends, you have your freedom, and I have my freedom. I have no quarrel with you; only do not look at me with pity.

Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity.

The timeless in you is aware of life's timelessness, and knows that yesterday is but today's memory and tomorrow is today's dream.

And is not that which sings and contemplates in you still dwelling within the bounds of that first moment which scattered the stars into space?

Who among you does not feel that his power to love is boundless? And yet who among you does not feel that very love, though boundless, encompassed within the center of his being?

And is not time even as love is, undivided and spaceless?

You are good when you are one with yourself. Yet when you are not one with yourself you are not evil.

For a divided house is not a den of thieves; it is only a divided house. And a ship without a rudder may wander aimlessly among perilous isles yet not sink to the bottom.

You are good when you strive to give of yourself. Yet you are not evil when you seek gain for yourself.

For when you seek gain you are but a root that clings to the earth and sucks at her breast. Surely the fruit cannot say to the root, 'Be like me, ripe and full and ever giving of your abundance.'

For to the fruit giving is a need, as receiving is a need to the root.

Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.

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.

Is the shepherd not joyful beneath his trembling, that he shall wear the mark of the king? Yet is he not more mindful of his trembling?

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

And what is it to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?

Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.

And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb.

And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.

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.

You are far greater than your knowledge, and more immense than your dreams.

In the heart of every winter there is a spring that yearns to bloom; behind the veil of each night there smiles a dawn.

May the wind carry your silent prayers to the ears of the mountain, for mountains remember the songs of those who walk in peace.

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

The obvious is that which is never seen until someone expresses it simply.

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

To be able to look back upon ones life in satisfaction, is to have lived twice.

The wound is the place where the light enters you.

What you seek is seeking you.

The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.

Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.

Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

You cannot find peace by avoiding life.

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.

Out of your vulnerabilities will come your strength.

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.