Khalil Gibran Quotes

Examine from time to time what are the dominant passions of your soul, and having ascertained this, mold your life, so that in thought, word, and deed you may as far as possible counteract them.

I can't judge the way other people behave. I can only look at myself.

I'm not a perfect human being by any stretch of the imagination. But there is always this little voice inside of me that keeps me where I know I need to be.

For self is the lord of self, self is the refuge of self; therefore curb thyself as the merchant curbs a good horse.

I believe in discipline, so I'm not the right person to cry about weakness and things like this, but maybe I'm not human.

In the matter of learning, the difference between the earnest and the careless student stands out clearly. The same holds true in the mastering of passion and the weaknesses to which our nature is subject, as in the acquiring of virtue.

How can I govern others, who can't even govern myself?

So then, when I speak to you, I speak to myself. If I seem to warn or to rebuke you, it is not so much you, as myself, to whom the warning or the rebuke is addressed.

I see bad stuff on the street all the time that I don't do anything about. I do bad stuff myself all the time. The goal is not to somehow be perfect - that's silly, that's naive. The goal is to just recognize there are choices in front of us, and to try to make better ones.

Anyone can identify with those moments in life where circumstances or people inform us that we've strayed from the path of our better nature and intentions. We know what that's like, and we resist it - so as not to feel like we're bad people.

I have been my own disciple and my own master. And I have been a good disciple but a bad master.

I think I'm still a little too intense for my own good sometimes.

You cannot lead others until you have first learned to lead yourself.

Preach in your own house and to your own company

What, pray, does it profit a man to teach others, and to be prating always about virtue, in high-sounding words, if he fails to give heed to his own instructions?

One of my worst fears is being a self-indulgent person.

The great thing about chess is it's a game for oneself. You don't work on what you can't control, you just work on yourself. And I think if more people did that, we'd all be a lot better off.

I can't worry about external factors, I have to focus on myself.

I have a mean streak and I am capable of cruelty. This does not mean that I am necessarily mean and cruel; instead, it means that I have to be vigilant about my capacity for cruelty and the mean bone in my body.

Instead of hating the people you think are war-makers, hate the appetites and disorder in your own soul, which are the causes of war. If you love peace, then hate injustice, hate tyranny, hate greed - but hate these things in yourself, not in another.

No mud can soil us but the mud we throw.

If thou wouldst be implacable, be so with thyself.

The first lesson of life is to burn our own smoke; that is, not to inflict on outsiders our personal sorrows and petty morbidness, not to keep thinking of ourselves as exceptional cases.

The very purpose of religion is to control yourself, not to criticize others. Rather, we must criticize ourselves. How much am I doing about my anger? About my attachment, about my hatred, about my pride, my jealousy? These are the things which we must check in daily life.

When I read the Bible, I see that we should have victory in our life and be overcomers, and I can't even control my temper. I'm impatient. I'm hard to get along with. I'm selfish and self-centered, and I don't seem to have any control over it.