Kahlil Gibran was a poet, philosopher, and artist, who was born in Lebanon, a land that has produced many prophets. The millions of Arabic-speaking people familiar with his writings in that language consider him the genius of his age. But he was a man whose fame and influence spread far beyond the Near East. His poetry has been translated into more than twenty languages. His drawings and paintings have been exhibited in the great capitals of the world and compared by Auguste Rodin to the work of William Blake. In the United States, which he made his home during the last twenty years of his life, he began to write in English. The Prophet and his other books of poetry, illustrated with his mystical drawings, are known and loved by innumerable Americans who find in them an expression of the deepest impulses of man's heart and mind.

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Then said Almitra, Speak to us of Love. (An abridged version of his poem)

And he raised his head and looked upon the people, and there fell a stillness upon them. And with a great voice he said:

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 may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden...

...When you love you should not say, "God is in my heart," but rather, "I am in the heart of God."
And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.

To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.

-- Kahlil Gibran

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And an old priest said, Speak to us of Religion. (An abridged version of his poem)

And he said: ...

...Your daily life is your temple and your religion.
Whenever you enter into it take with you your all.

Take the plough and the forge and the mallet and the lute,
The things you have fashioned in necessity or for delight.

For in reverie you cannot rise above your achievements nor fall lower than your failures.

And take with you all men: For in adoration you cannot fly higher than their hopes nor humble yourself lower than their despair.

And if you would know God be not therefore a solver of riddles.
Rather look about you and you shall see Him playing with your children.

And look into space; you shall see Him walking in the cloud, outstretching His arms in the lightning and descending in rain. You shall see Him smiling in flowers, then rising and waving His hands in trees.

-- Kahlil Gibran

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Quotes taken from the book, "The Prophet - Gibran's Masterpiece"
a compilation made by Alfred A. Knopf.

---

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.
You would touch with your fingers
the naked body of your dreams
And it is well you should

The hidden well-spring of your Soul
must needs rise
and run murmuring to the sea
And the treasure of your infinite depths
would be revealed to your eyes.
But let there be no scales to weigh your unknown treasure.

And seek not the depths of your knowledge with staff
or sounding line. For self is a sea boundless and measureless.
Say not..
~I have found the truth~
but rather,
~I have found a truth~.
Say not...
~I have found the path
of the Soul~
Say rather,
~I have met the Soul
walking upon my path~
For the Soul walks upon all paths.

The Soul walks not upon a line,
neither does it grow like a reed.
The Soul unfolds itself,

like a lotus
of countless petals.

.~Kahlil Gibran - The Prophet~

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'He who has not looked on sorrow will never see joy' Kahlil Gibran

Love

'Limited Love asks for possession of the beloved, but the unlimited asks only for itself' Kahlil Gibran

'Love is the only freedom in the world because it so elevates the spirit that the laws of humanity and the phenonmena of nature do not alter its course.'

'Love is the only flower that grows and blossoms without the aid of seasons.'

'Love that does not renew itself every day becomes a habit and in turn a slavery.'

'There is neither religion nor science beyond beauty'

Self Knowledge, Thoughts Create Reality

'If some fool tells you the soul perishes like the body and that which dies never returns, tell him the flower perishes but the seed remains and lies before us as the secret of life everlasting.'

'Every beauty and greatness in this world is created by a single thought or emotion inside a man. Everything we see today, made by past generations, was before its appearance, a thougth in the mind of a man or an impule in the heart of a woman.'

'We choose our joys and our sorrows long before we experience them.'

'You may chain my hands and shackle my feet; you may even throw me in a dark prison, but you shall not enslave my thinking because it is free.'

'Man struggles to find life outside himself, unaware that the life he is seeking is within him.'

'I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers.'

Learning, Knowledge, Wisdom

'Perplexity is the beginning of knowledge'

'Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.'

'You cannot have youth and the knowledge of it at the same time; For youth is too busy living to know, and knowledge is too busy seeking itself to live.'

'Wisdom is not in words; Wisdom is meaning within words.'

'When you reach the end of what you should know, you will ne at the beginning of ewhat you should sense.'

'If you can only see what light reveals and hear only what sound announces, Then in truth you do not see nor do you hear.'

Silence

'The real in us is silent; the acquired is talkative.'

'The silence of the envious is too noisy.'

'A hermit is one who renounces the world of fragments that he may enjoy the world wholly and without interruption.'

 

 

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