Excerpts we love from love letters from Khalil Gibran to May Ziyadeh: * A critical faculty that allows you to observe that which very few people can... *There is dialectic between minds and an interplay of thoughts, which lie beyond sensory awareness. A bond, abstract, delicate, strange and far more steadfast, firm and permanent even than moral bonds…dreams within dreams…I prefer that perception which is silent, complete and satisfying in itself to that which calls for justification and analysis…a simple look. *Writing on subjects as these tends to complicate the simplest of issues and throw a heavy veil of formality over the most elemental of matters. We feel and think in a language that is more honest and far more sincere than the language in which we write…Yet what a strange effect certain words have on us sometimes… On reading for a second time I find all the generalities seem to change into something of personal significance. *In the middle of a crowd the pain and suffering of loneliness are merely intensified, for how often does a man find himself among his fellow men and well wishers, talking to them, exchanging ideas, sharing in their thoughts and actions, and all this he does sincerely and wholeheartedly, yet failing to transcend the limitations of the acquired self in a world of appearances. *The heart is simple, and the manifestations of the heart are rudimentary things, whereas rhetoric is a social vehicle. *Look on love as a goal in itself and not as a means to achieve some other end. * I am consciously or not continually in a state of ‘waiting’, sometimes it seems to me that I spend my life in expectation of that which has not yet come to pass *My caution was for fear of what might develop, and the cause of my agony is that I did not anticipate what might come…I wish you knew how weary I am of unnecessary confusion, if you only know how much I need simplicity, I wish you knew how much I long for the absolute, the absolute that cries but does not hide its tears and the absolute that laughs and is not embarrassed by its laughter- I wish you knew…And this feeling of mine has been a fact, simple, clear and beautiful. An instinct I do not nor do I wish to understand or push away. * Continued to probe the meaning of every utterance you have kindly whispered in my ear. * Person who finds its inspiration only in what like itself suggests. *Independent is the point all souls move towards, and that the oak and the willow do not grow in each others shade. * People who imagine that they understand us because they find in our ‘exterior’ behavior something akin to what they have experienced but once in their lifetime. It is not enough ( for them) to claim they know our secrets- the secrets which we within ourselves do not know, but they must number us and give us labels and shelve us in one of the many compartments which comprise their thoughts and ideas, just as the chemist does with bottles of medicine and powders. *A friend who is far away is sometimes much nearer than one who is at hand. Is not the mountain far more awe inspiring and more clearly visible to one passing through the valley than to those who inhabit the mountain? * To come across someone who listens to you in your silence or who understands you in your stillness. * I have acted without wisdom in certain matters- are there not spheres of life which are beyond the reach of wisdom. * Some of our thoughts and experiences cannot occur unless two people share in them jointly and simultaneously. * There are patterns to follow even in madness and despair. *If quarreling be unavoidable, we must not go our separate ways as we used to in the past after every ‘battle’, we must remain despite our differences, under one roof until we are bored of quarrelling and begin to laugh, or else until quarreling itself is bored with us and leaves us with a shake of the head. Our souls and hearts have never quarreled, only our thoughts have, and thought is acquired, it is derived from the environment, from what we see in front of us, from what each day brings to us, but our souls and hearts formed a sublime essence in us long before our thoughts. * Every heart has its special Qiblah, every heart has a special direction towards which it turns when it is all alone. Every heart has a hermitage to which it retires by itself to seek comfort and consolation. I have found the direction on which my heart turns. * Do not fear love, we must surrender to it in spite of what it may bring in the way of pain of desolation, of longing, and in spite of all the perplexity and bewilderment. * The human heart is governed by the laws of distance and measurement, and the strongest and most deep seated feeling in our heart is that to which we surrender and in surrendering to it we feel a pleasure and a comfort and a tranquility not withstanding our inability to explain its nature. *What is right and blessed and permanent in life does not follow our wishes, but moves us according to its will alysiasache.tumblr/post/3980907434/excerpt-from-blue-flame-love-letters-from-khalil
Posted on: Mon, 10 Jun 2013 09:49:42 +0000
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