The Prophet is a book of 26 prose poetry fables written in English by the Lebanese-American artist, philosopher and writer Kahlil Gibran.It was originally published in 1923 by Alfred A. Knopf. It is Gibran’s best known work. The Prophet has been translated into over 40 different languages and has never been out of print.

The Prophet has been translated into well over 40 languages. By 2012, it had sold more than nine million copies in its American edition alone since its original publication in 1923.

Of an ambitious first printing of 2,000 in 1923, Knopf sold 1,159 copies. The demand for The Prophet doubled the following year — and doubled again the year after that. Since then, annual sales have risen steadily: from 12,000 in 1935 to 111,000 in 1961 to 240,000 in 1965. The book sold its one millionth copy in 1957. At one point, The Prophet sold more than 5000 copies a week worldwide.

Story

The prophet, Almustafa, has lived in the foreign city of Orphalese for 12 years and is about to board a ship which will carry him home. He is stopped by a group of people, with whom he discusses topics such as life and the human condition. The book is divided into chapters dealing with love, marriage, children, giving, eating and drinking, work, joy and sorrow, houses, clothes, buying and selling, crime and punishment, laws, freedom, reason and passion, pain, self-knowledge, teaching, friendship, talking, time, good and evil, prayer, pleasure, beauty, religion, and death.

Inspiration

Though born a Maronite, he was influenced not only by his own religion but also by Islam, and especially by the mysticism of the Sufis. His knowledge of Lebanon’s bloody history, with its destructive factional struggles, strengthened his belief in the fundamental unity of religions, which his parents exemplified by welcoming people of various religions in their home. Connections and parallels have also been made to William Blake‘s work, as well as the theological ideas of Walt Whitman and in Ralph Waldo Emerson such as reincarnation and the Over-soul. Themes of influence in his work were Islamic/Arabic art, European Classicism (particularly Leonardo Da Vinci) and Romanticism (Blake and Auguste Rodin), the pre-Raphelite Brotherhood, and more modern symbolism and surrealism.

Gibran had a number of strong connections to the Bahá’í Faith starting around 1912. One of Gibran’s acquaintances, Juliet Thompson, reported several anecdotes relating to Gibran. She recalled Gibran had met ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the leader of the religion at the time of his journeys to the West Gibran was unable to sleep the night before meeting him in person to draw his portrait in April 1912 on the island of Manhattan. Gibran later told Thompson that in ‘Abdu’l-Bahá he had “seen the Unseen, and been filled”. Gibran began work on the book The Prophet, in 1912 when “he got the first motif, for his Island God” whose ‘Prometheus exile shall be an Island one.” In 1928, after the death of Abdu'l-Bahá, at a viewing of a movie ofAbdu’l-Bahá, Gibran rose to talk and proclaimed in tears an exalted station of `Abdu’l-Bahá and left the event weeping still.

Relevant quotes

You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts.

“You give but little when you give of your possessions.

It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.”

“You pray in your distress and in your need; would that you might pray also in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance.”

 

“I love you when you bow in your mosque, kneel in your temple, pray in your church. For you and I are sons of one religion, and it is the spirit.”

“Love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation”

“For what is prayer but the expansion of your self into the living ether?”

Pag.11

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.

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you.
Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.

Pag.12

Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself,
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed:
For love is sufficient unto love.

Pag.12

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.

Pag.15

You were born together, and together you shall be forever more.
You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days.
Ay, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.
But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

Fill each other’s cup, but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread, but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.

Pag.17

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

Pag.19

You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.

you should give in humility and in truth because when you give in humility and truth you impress GOD

Pag. 28

The deeper sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

 

Pag. 29

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your
laughter rises was oftentime filled with your tears…
When you are joyous, look deep into
your heart and you shall find it is only
that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in
your heart, and you shall see that in truth
you are weeping for that which has been
your delight.

Some of you say, ‘Joy is greater than sorrow,’ and others say, ‘Nay, sorrow is the greater.’
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.”

Pag. 52

Could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy; and you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.

Pag. 54

Say not, “I have found the path of the soul.” Say rather, “I have found the soul walking upon my path.”
For the soul walks upon all paths.

Pag . 58

Your friend is your needs answered.
He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.
And he is your board and your fireside.
For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.

Of time you would make a stream upon whose bank you would sit and watch its flowing. Yet the timeless in you is aware of life’s timelessness, And knows that ‘yesterday is but today’s memory and tomorrow is today’s dream.

 

And that that which sings and contemplates in you is still dwelling within the bounds of that first moment which scattered the stars into space.

 

And is not time even as love is, undivided and peaceless? But if in you thought you must measure time into seasons, let each season encircle all the other seasons, And let today embrace the past with remembrance and the future with longing.