To Work With Love

‘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.
It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit.
It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit.’

– Gibran. K. 1923. De Profeet [The Prophet] Den Haag, The Netherlands: Mirananda (2000) p. 24-25

Speak to us of Beauty

‘And beauty is not a need but an ecstasy.
It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth,
But rather a heart enflamed and a soul enchanted.
It is not the image you would see nor the song you would hear,
But rather an image you see though you close your eyes and a song you hear though you shut your ears.
It is not the sap within the furrowed bark, nor a wing attached to a claw,
But rather a garden for ever in bloom and a flock of angels for ever in flight.

People of Orphalese, beauty is life when life unveils her holy face.
But you are life and you are the veil.
Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.
But you are eternity and you are the mirror.’

– Gibran. K. 1923. De Profeet [The Prophet] Den Haag, The Netherlands: Mirananda (2000) p. 72-73

A Boundless Ocean

‘Ready am I to go, and my eagerness with sails full set awaits the wind.
Only another breath will I breathe in this still air, only another loving look cast backward,
Then I shall stand among you, a seafarer among seafarers.
And you, vast sea, sleepless mother,
Who alone are peace and freedom to the river and the stream,
Only another winding will this stream make, only another murmur in this glade,
And then shall I come to you, a boundless drop to a boundless ocean.’

– Gibran. K. 1923. De Profeet [The Prophet] Den Haag, The Netherlands: Mirananda (2000) p. 7

Beauty

When contemplating the property beauty, as with knowledge, it turns out to be very difficult to provide an uncontentious analysis. Because of its many different conceptions and dimensions, the full value of beauty is surprisingly hard to capture. To that end, below is a list of quotations to help sketch a definition of the property beauty.

“Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.”
– Confucius

“The voice of beauty speaks softly; it creeps only into the most fully awakened souls.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche

“Beauty awakens the soul to act.”
– Dante Alighieri

“Beauty is not caused. It is.”
– Emily Dickinson

“Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.
But you are eternity and you are the mirror.”
– Khalil Gibran

“Whatever the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth whether it existed before or not.”
– John Keats

“There is no exquisite beauty without some strangeness in the proportion.”
– Edgar Allan Poe

“Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty.”
– David Hume

“Beauty is a form of Genius – is higher, indeed, than Genius, as it needs no explanation. It is one of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in the dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has divine right of sovereignty. It makes princes of those who have it.”
– Oscar Wilde

“Beauty, to me, is about being comfortable in your own skin. That, or a kick-ass red lipstick.”
– Gwyneth Paltrow

“Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.”
– Anne Frank

See more: Approximations

A Priestess

‘And if you are listening in the silence of the night, you will hear them say in silence:
‘Our God, who is our winged self, it is Your will that works in our desires.
It is because of Your urge in us that our nights, whose are Yours, want to bask in days, whose are Yours as well.
We can ask you nothing, because You already know our needs, before they are born in us.
You are what we need; and whilst giving more of Yourself, You give us everything.’

– Gibran. K. 1923. De Profeet [The Prophet] Den Haag, The Netherlands: Mirananda (2000) p. 65-66