By ofwisdomowl 
ON LOVE
For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed.
And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
ON MARRIAGE
You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore. But let there be spaces in your togetherness. And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.
ON CHILDREN
Your children are not your children.
They come through you but not from you. And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts. For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
ON GIVING
You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.
It is well to give when asked, but it is better to give unasked.
All you have shall some day be given; Therefore give now, that the season of giving may be yours and not your inheritors.
ON EATING AND DRINKING
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. When you kill a beast say to him in your heart: By the same power that slays you, I too am slain; and I too shall be consumed. And when you crush an apple with your teeth, say to it in your heart: Your seeds shall live in my body.
ON WORK
The wind speaks not more sweetly to the giant oaks than to the least of all the blades of grass. 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.
ON JOY AND SORROW
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
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. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.
Sorrow and Joy are inseparable. Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.
ON HOUSES
Your house is your larger body.
Your house shall be not an anchor but a mast. You shall not fold your wings that you may pass through doors, nor bend your heads that they strike not against a ceiling, nor fear to breathe lest walls should crack and fall down.
Your house shall not hold your secret nor shelter your longing. 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.
ON CLOTHES
Your clothes conceal much of your beauty, yet they hide not the unbeautiful. And though you seek in garments the freedom of privacy you may find in them a harness and a chain.
ON BUYING AND SELLING
It is in exchanging the gifts of the earth that you shall find abundance and be satisfied. Before you leave the market place, see that no one has gone his way with empty hands.
ON FREEDOM
You can only be free when even the desire of seeking freedom becomes a harness to you, and when you cease to speak of freedom as a goal and a fulfillment.
In truth that which you call freedom is the strongest of these chains, though its links glitter in the sun and dazzle your eyes.
Verily all things move within your being in constant half embrace, the desired and the dreaded, the repugnant and the cherished, the pursued and that which you would escape. These things move within you as lights and shadows in pairs that cling. And when the shadow fades and is no more, the light that lingers becomes a shadow to another light.
ON REASON AND PASSION
Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield, upon which your reason and your judgment wage war against your passion and your appetite.
For reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction. Therefore let your soul exalt your reason to the height of passion, that it may sing; And let it direct your passion with reason, that your passion may live through its own daily resurrection, and like the phoenix rise above its own ashes.
I would have you consider your judgment and your appetite even as you would two loved guests in your house. Surely you would not honour one guest above the other; for he who is more mindful of one loses the love and the faith of both.
When you sit in the cool shade of the white poplars, sharing the peace and serenity of distant fields and meadows—then let your heart say in silence, “God rests in reason.” And when the storm comes, and the mighty wind shakes the forest, and thunder and lightning proclaim the majesty of the sky,—then let your heart say in awe, “God moves in passion.” You too should rest in reason and move in passion.
ON PAIN
Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
Much of your pain is self-chosen.
ON SELF-KNOWLEDGE
Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and the nights. But your ears thirst for the sound of your heart’s knowledge. You would know in words that which you have always known in thought.
ON TEACHING
No man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.
The teacher, If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind.
ON FRIENDSHIP
Your friend is your needs answered. And he is your board and your fireside. And let your best be for your friend. Seek him always with hours to live. For it is his to fill your need, but not your emptiness.
ON TALKING
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.
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.
There are those among you who seek the talkative through fear of being alone. There are those who have the truth within them, but they tell it not in words.
ON TIME
You would measure time the measureless and the immeasurable. You would adjust your conduct and even direct the course of your spirit according to hours and seasons.
The timeless in you is aware of life’s timelessness, And knows that yesterday is but today’s memory and tomorrow is today’s dream.
But if in your thought you must measure time into seasons, let each season encircle all the other seasons, And let today embrace the past with remembrance and the future with longing.
ON GOOD AND EVIL
Verily when good is hungry it seeks food even in dark caves, and when it thirsts it drinks even of dead waters. You are good when you are one with yourself.
You are good when you strive to give of yourself. You are good when you are fully awake in your speech. You are good when you walk to your goal firmly and with bold steps.
In your longing for your giant self lies your goodness: and that longing is in all of you.
ON PRAYER
It is enough that you enter the temple invisible. You who are born of the mountains and the forests and the seas can find their prayer in your heart.
ON PLEASURE
In very truth, pleasure is a freedom-song. And I fain would have you sing it with fullness of heart; yet I would not have you lose your hearts in the singing.
Oftentimes in denying yourself pleasure you do but store the desire in the recesses of your being.
“How shall we distinguish that which is good in pleasure from that which is not good?” Go to your fields and your gardens, and you shall learn that it is the pleasure of the bee to gather honey of the flower, But it is also the pleasure of the flower to yield its honey to the bee. For to the bee a flower is a fountain of life, And to the flower a bee is a messenger of love, And to both, bee and flower, the giving and the receiving of pleasure is a need and an ecstasy. People of Orphalese, be in your pleasures like the flowers and the bees.