Life is an island in an ocean of solitude and seclusion.
Life is an island, rocks are its desires, trees its dreams, and flowers its loneliness, and it is in the middle of an ocean of solitude and seclusion.
Your life, my friend, is an island separated from all other islands and continents. Regardless of how many boats you send to other shores, you yourself are an island separated by its own pains, secluded its happiness and far away in its compassion and hidden in its secrets and mysteries.
I saw you, my friend, sitting upon a mound of gold, happy in your wealth and great in your riches and believing that a handful of gold is the secret chain that links the thoughts of the people with your own thoughts and links their feeling with your own.
~ MIRRORS OF THE SOUL
And some random notes and miscellanea from/on this astounding book:
The tax collectors of Turkey were ruthless, prospecting their services, overcharging people to drive up their personal profits.
The Suez canal was the straw that broke not just the Ottoman Empire’s back, but also the Arab world on which the Ottomans relied. It closed down the caravan routes and drove the entire region out of business.
Kahlil Gibran carried with him the awe and mystic qualities of his home region, Wadi Qadisha (Sacred Valley). He saw the same untenable qualities in NYC — a place daunting and magical, unreachable to everyone but those who dare pursue it.
According to the preface in Gibran’s book, the ancient texts were translated from Greek to Arabic — in Damascus — and then to English and French by the crusaders.
From the bays of Pearl Coast,
Dive in crystal waters, find a shiny pearl.