Your reason and your passion are the rudder and the sails of your seafaring soul. 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 livethrough its own daily resurrection, and like the phoenix rise above its own ashes. And since you are a breath in God’s sphere, and a leaf in God’s forest, you too should rest in reason and move in passion. . Kahlil Gibran
About This Quote

To live up to our full potential, we must use our reason to direct our passion, and our passion to direct our reason. This quote by Rumi is meant to help us understand the importance of using passion and reason, but it goes even further than that. It is important to understand that if we are not careful, we can become too passionate about something which causes us to burn out. If we are not careful with our decision making, we can become too rigid and inflexible.

When this happens, we cannot move forward in life. We lose our ability to make connections with others. This is a very different way of looking at things from the way I have been describing them so far.

In this quote, it is not about controlling your emotions or keeping your head above water, rather it is about recognizing your full potential and living up to it.

Source: The Prophet

Some Similar Quotes
  1. Before you, Bella, my life was like a moonless night. Very dark, but there were stars, points of light and reason..And then you shot across my sky like a meteor. Suddenly everything was on fire; there was brilliancy, there was beauty. When you were gone,... - Stephenie Meyer

  2. The heart has its reasons which reason knows not. - Blaise Pascal

  3. One ought to hold on to one's heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too. - Friedrich Nietzsche

  4. Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend More than cool reason ever comprehends. The lunatic, the lover and the poet Are of imagination all compact: One sees more devils than vast hell can hold, That is, the madman: the lover,... - William Shakespeare

  5. Cassia.I know which life is my real one now, no matter what happens. It’s the one with you. For some reason, knowing that even one person knows my story makes things different. Maybe it’s like the poem says. Maybe this is my way of not... - Ally Condie

More Quotes By Kahlil Gibran
  1. If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. If they don't, they never were.

  2. Let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other's cup but...

  3. Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.

  4. When love beckons to you follow him, Though his ways are hard and steep. And when his wings enfold you yield to him, Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you. And when he speaks to you believe in him, Though his voice...

  5. No human relation gives one possession in another–every two souls are absolutely different. In friendship or in love, the two side by side raise hands together to find what one cannot reach alone.

Related Topics