The Prophet

For to stay, though the hours burn in the night, is to freeze and crystallize and be bound in a mould. (Location 88)

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, (Location 199)

Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. (Location 203)

You may give them your love but not your thoughts, (Location 217)

You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give. (Location 231)

But since you must kill to eat, and rob the newly born of its mother's milk to quench your thirst, let it then be an act of worship, (Location 271)

For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons, and to step out of life's procession that marches in majesty and proud submission towards the infinite. (Location 293)

When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music. (Location 295)

Which of you would be a reed, dumb and silent, when all else sings together in unison? (Location 296)

But I say to you that when you work you fulfill a part of earth's furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream was born, And in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life, And to love life through labour is to be intimate with life's inmost secret. (Location 298)

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. For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man's hunger. And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distills a poison in the wine. (Location 322)

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. (Location 335)

And is not the lute that soothes your spirit the very wood that was hollowed with knives? (Location 337)

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. (Location 338)

And what is it you guard with fastened doors? Have you peace, the quiet urge that reveals your power? Have you remembrances, the glimmering arches that span the summits of the mind? Have you beauty, that leads the heart from things fashioned of wood and stone to the holy mountain? Tell me, have you these in your houses? Or have you only comfort, and the lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and then becomes a host, and then a master? (Location 365)

Ay, and it becomes a tamer, and with hook and scourge makes puppets of your larger desires. (Location 372)

Verily the lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul, and then walks grinning in the funeral. (Location 376)

For that which is boundless in you abides in the mansion of the sky, whose door is the morning mist, and whose windows are the songs and the silences of night. (Location 384)

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. (Location 638)

And 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. (Location 640)

Of the good in you I can speak, but not of the evil. For what is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst? (Location 672)

You are good when you are one with yourself. Yet when you are not one with yourself you are not evil. (Location 676)

You are good when you strive to give of yourself. Yet you are not evil when you seek gain for yourself. For when you strive for 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." (Location 680)

For to the fruit giving is a need, as receiving is a need to the root. (Location 684)

For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun? (Location 849)

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. (Location 850)