excerpt: The Prophet

"What shall I say of these save that they 

too stand in the sunlight, but with their 

backs to the sun? 

They see only their shadows, and their

shadows are their laws.

And what is the sun to them but a caster 

of shadows?

And what is it to acknowledge the laws 

but to stoop down and trace their shadows 

upon the earth?

But you who walk facing the sun, what 

images drawn on the earth can hold you?"

...

"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.

And thus, your freedom when 
it loses its fetters 
becomes itself 
the fetter of a 
greater freedom."

- Kahlil Gibran