Ten of Gibran's most classic short poems are as follows:
1. We have gone so far that we have forgotten why we set out in the first place.
2. If one day: you no longer look for love, just love; you no longer desire success, just do it; you no longer pursue growth, just practice; then everything really begins.
3. It is only when we are apart that we realize how deep our love is.
4. My soul warns me, it teaches me not to be proud of a praise and not to be sad because of a blame. When trees bloom in spring and bear fruit in summer, they don’t expect praise; when they drop leaves in autumn and wither in winter, they don’t fear blame.
5. You cannot have youth and knowledge about youth at the same time. Because youth is busy with life and does not care to understand; while knowledge is busy with self-seeking in order to live.
6. I have despised my soul 7 times: it could be aggressive but pretended to be humble; it filled it with love when it was empty; it chose easy between difficulty and ease; it made mistakes , but comforts itself by thinking that others will make mistakes; it is free and weak but regards it as the tenacity of life; it despises an ugly face, but does not know that it is one of its own masks, and it turns sideways to the mud of life , although unwilling, but timid.
7. Memory is a form of encounter. Forgetting is a form of freedom.
8. Love each other, but don’t let love become a bondage: it is better to let it become a surging sea, and the two sides are your souls. Fill each other's cups, but do not drink from the same cup. Give bread to each other, but do not eat any of it. They sing and dance together happily, but they are still independent. They talk to each other, but they don't let each other collect them. Because only the hand of life can contain your heart. Stand together, but not too close.
9. Parents are bows and children are arrows. Bows can only help the arrows go where they want to go.
10. I have seen all kinds of slavery. The most surprising one is to force people’s present and the past of their parents’ generations together, making their souls bow before the traditions of their ancestors and turning them into stale souls. A new body, a new grave of decay. Deaf-style slavery forces people to follow the environment, dye according to its colors, change clothes according to their clothes, listen to the sounds and follow the shadows.