Kahlil Gibran "The Prophet"

During my own personal "enlightenment years," when I was reading everything from Aldous Huxley to Friedrich Nietzsche, my mother gave me a copy of Kahlil Gibran's masterpiece "The Prophet."

In this work, Gibran shares his thoughts on everything from love and marriage, to friendship and giving. Written in prose style, Gibran shares his philosophies on freedom, pain and the search for self-knowledge.

Gibran was born in Lebanon in 1883, but moved to the United States with his mother, uncle, two sisters and brother in 1895. While attending an ungraded school in Boston, Gibran drew attention from his teachers for his drawings and sketches. He was later introduced to the artist Fred Holland Day, who helped Gibran on his road to artistic fame.

His most famous work is The Prophet, a book of 26 poetic essays that was published in 1923. Here is an excerpt from this work where Gibran shares his thoughts and feelings on Giving.



After Gibran's death, his life-time friend Mary Haskell donated nearly one-hundred works of art by Gibran to the Telfair Museum of Art in Savannah, GA. This is the largest public collection of Gibran's art in the country.

My favorite quotes from Kahlil Gibran:

• "All our words are but crumbs that fall down from the feast of the mind."
  
• "An eye for an eye, and the whole world would be blind."
  
• "Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother."
  
• "Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation."
  
• "Faith is a knowledge within the heart, beyond the reach of proof."
  
• "I prefer to be a dreamer among the humblest, with visions to be realized, than lord among those without dreams and desires."
  
• "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."
  
• "March on. Do not tarry. To go forward is to move toward perfection. March on, and fear not the thorns, or the sharp stones on life's path."
  
• "Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars."
  
• "The just is close to the people's heart, but the merciful is close to the heart of God."
  
• "To be able to look back upon ones life in satisfaction, is to live twice."
  
• "Yesterday is but today's memory, and tomorrow is today's dream."