Your reason and your passion are the rudder and
the sails of your seafaring soul.

If either your sails or your rudder be broken, you
can but toss and drift, or else be held at a standstill
in mid-seas.

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 honor one guest above the
other; for he who is more mindful of one loses the
love and the faith of both.

Among the hills, 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.’

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.

-KHALIL GIBRAN