Book Summaries

The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran Summary and Analysis

The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran Summary and Analysis. The Prophet, who has lived in a foreign city for 12 years, is about to board a ship that will take him home. He is stopped by a group of people with whom he teaches the mysteries of life.

About the author: Kahlil Gibran is a Lebanese American artist, poet, and writer, who was regarded in the Arab world, as a literary and political rebel. The Prophet has been translated into forty languages and is considered the most widely read book of the twentieth century. Gibran has about twenty-five books to his credit. His famous trilogy comprises The Prophet, The Prophet & Garden of the Prophet.

Despite the criticisms the book received when first published in 1923, The Prophet was a bestseller. Though it wasn’t until the 1930s that it would gain greater popularity and extend to the 1960s counterculture.

The Prophet is a book of poetic essays written by Gibran and is widely acclaimed as one of the most spiritual books ever written. His other great works include The Broken Wings, Tears, and Laughter, Sand and Foam

Gibran passed away in 1931 due to a liver ailment; his body was shipped back and cremated in Lebanon at the age of 48. He is considered to be the third most widely read poet in history after Shakespeare and Lao-Tzu.

Without further delays, please enjoy The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran

The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran Summary and Analysis.

The coming of the ship:

The sea that calls all things unto her calls me, and I must embark. For to stay, though the hours burn in the night, is to freeze and crystallize and be bound in a Mould.
Let not the waves of the sea separate us now, and the years you have spent in our midst become a memory.
Deep is your longing for the land of your memories and the dwelling place of your greater desires, and our love would not bind you nor our needs hold you.
A voice cannot carry the tongue and the lips that gave it wings. Alone must it seek the ether. And alone and without his nest shall the eagle fly across the sun.
If this indeed be the hour in which I lift up my lantern, it is not my flame that shall burn therein. Empty and dark shall I raise my lantern, and the guardian of the night shall fill it with oil, and he shall light it also.
Prophet of God, in quest of the uttermost, long have you searched the distances for your ship. And now your ship has come, and you must need to go.

Love:

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.”
To return home at eventide with gratitude and sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.
Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.

Marriage:

Let there be spaces in your togetherness and let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
Fill each other’s cups but drink not from one cup.
Give one another your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
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.

Children:

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.

The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran Summary and Analysis.

Giving:

You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.
Some have little and give it all. These are the believers in life and the bounty of life, and their coffer is never empty.
Some give with joy, and that joy is their reward.
All you have shall someday be given; Therefore, give now, that the season of giving may be yours and not your inheritors.
He who deserves to drink from the ocean of life deserves to fill his cup from your little stream.
See first that you yourself deserve to be a giver and an instrument of giving. For in truth, it is life that gives unto life—while you, who deem yourself a giver, are but a witness.

Eating and Drinking:

When you kill a beast, say to him in your heart: “By the same power that slays you, I too am slain; and I too shall be consumed. For the law that delivered you into my hand shall deliver me into a mightier hand.
When you crush an apple with your teeth, say to it in your heart: “Your seeds shall live in my body, and the buds of your tomorrow shall blossom in my heart, your fragrance shall be my breath, and together we shall rejoice through all the seasons.”

Work:

You work so that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth.
When you work, you fulfill a part of earth’s furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream was born, And in keeping yourself with labor, is to be intimate with life’s inmost secret.
When you work with love, you bind yourself to yourself, to one another, and to God.
The wind speaks not more sweetly to the giant oaks than to the least of all the blades of grass; And he alone is great who turns the voice of the wind into a song made sweeter by his own loving.

Joy and Sorrow:

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
Together they come, and when one sits alone with your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.
Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.

Houses:

Your house is your larger body. It grows in the sun and sleeps in the stillness of the night, and it is not dreamless.
Your house shall not be an anchor but a mast. It shall not be a glistening film that covers a wound but an eyelid that guards the eye. You shall not fold your wings that you may pass through the doors, nor bend your heads that they strike not against the ceiling, nor fear to breathe lest walls should crack and fall down.
Your house shall not hold your secret nor shelter your longing.

The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran Summary and Analysis.

Clothes:

Your clothes conceal much of your beauty, yet they hide not the unbeautiful.
For the breath of life is in the sunlight, and the hand of life is in the wind.
The earth delights to feel your bare feet, and the winds long to play with your hair.

Buying and Selling:

It is in exchanging the gifts of the earth that you shall find abundance and be satisfied. Yet, unless the exchange be in love and kindly justice, it will but lead some to greed and others to hunger.
For the master spirit of the earth shall not sleep peacefully upon the wind till the needs of the least of you are satisfied.

Crime and Punishment:

It is when your spirit goes wandering upon the wind that you, alone and unguarded, commit a wrong unto others and, therefore, unto yourself.
And for that wrong committed, must you knock and wait a while unheeded at the gate of the blessed.
Much in you is still man, and much in you is not yet man,
For it is he and not your god-self nor the pigmy in the mist that knows crime and the punishment of crime.
You cannot separate the just from the unjust and the good from the wicked; For they stand together before the face of the sun even as the black thread and the white are woven together.
What judgment pronounce you upon him who though honest in the flesh yet is a thief in spirit?
How shall you punish those whose remorse is already greater than their misdeeds?
Yet cannot lay remorse upon the innocent nor lift it from the heart of the guilty.
The erect and the fallen are but one man standing in twilight between the night of his pigmy-self and the day of his god-self, and that the cornerstone of the temple is not higher than the lowest stone in its foundation.

Laws:

You delight in laying down laws, yet you delight more in breaking them like children playing by the ocean who build sand towers with constancy and then destroy them with laughter.
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?

Freedom:

You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care nor your nights without a want and a grief, but rather when these things girdle your life, and yet you rise above them naked and unbound.
For how can a tyrant rule the free and the proud, but for a tyranny in their own freedom and a shame in their own pride?
Even as slaves humble themselves before a tyrant and praise him though he slays them.
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.

The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran Summary and Analysis.

Reason and Passion:

Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield upon which your reason and your judgment wage war against your passion and your appetite.
Your reason and your passion are the rudders 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.
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.

Pain:

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
Much of your pain is self-chosen.
It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self. Therefore, trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquility: For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the unseen, and the cup he brings, though it burns your lips, has been fashioned of the clay which the potter has moistened with his own sacred tears.

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.
The hidden well-spring of your soul must need rise and run murmuring to the sea, And the treasure of your infinite depths would be revealed to your eyes.
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 unfolds itself like a lotus of countless petals.

Teaching:

The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple among his followers gives not of his wisdom but rather of his faith and his lovingness.
The astronomer may speak to you of his understanding of space, but he cannot give you, his understanding.
And even as each one of you stands alone in God’s knowledge, so must each one of you be alone in his knowledge of God and his understanding of the earth.

Friendship:

When your friend speaks his mind, you fear not the “nay” in your own mind, nor do you withhold the “ay.” And when he is silent, your heart ceases not to listen to his heart; for without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed.
If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also.
For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill?
Seek him always with hours to live. For it is his to fill your need, but not your emptiness.

Talking:

When you can no longer dwell in the solitude of your heart, you live in your lips, and sound is a diversion and a pastime.
When you meet your friend on the roadside or in the marketplace, let the spirit in you move your lips and direct your tongue. for his soul will keep the truth of your heart as the taste of the wine is remembered. When the color is forgotten, and the vessel is no more.

Time:

Adjust your conduct and even direct the course of your spirit according to hours and seasons.
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 which sings and contemplates in you is still dwelling within the bounds of that first moment which scattered the stars into space.
But if in your thought you must measure time into seasons, let each season encircle all the other seasons. Let today embrace the past with remembrance and the future with longing.

Good and Evil:

You are good when you are one with yourself. Yet when you are not one with yourself, you are not evil. For a divided house is not a den of thieves; it is only a divided house.
You are good when you strive to give of yourself. Yet you are not evil when you seek gain for yourself.
Surely the fruit cannot say to the root, “Be like me, ride and full and ever giving of your abundance.” For to the fruit, giving is a need, as receiving is a need to the root.
You are good when you are fully awake in your speech, yet you are not evil when you sleep while your tongue staggers without purpose. And even stumbling speech may strengthen a weak tongue.
You are good when you walk to your goal firmly and with bold steps. Yet you are not evil when you go thither limping. Even those who limp go not backward.

The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran Summary and Analysis.

Prayer:

For what is prayer but the expansion of yourself into the living ether?
And if it is for your comfort to pour your darkness into space, it is also for your delight to pour forth the dawning of your heart.
When you pray, you rise to meet in the air those who are praying at that very hour, and whom save in prayer you may not meet. Therefore let your visit to that temple be invisible, be for naught but ecstasy and sweet communion. For If you should enter the temple for no other purpose than asking, you shall not receive. And if you should enter into it to humble yourself, you shall not be lifted. Or even if you should enter it to beg for the good of others you shall not be heard.
God listens not to your words save when he himself utters them through your lips.
And I cannot teach you the prayer of the seas, the forests, and the mountains. But you who are born of the mountains, and the forests, and the seas can find their prayer in your heart, and if you but listen in the stillness of the night you shall hear them saying in silence, “Our God, who art our winged self, it is thy will in us that willeth…

Pleasure:

Pleasure is a freedom song, but it is not freedom. It is the blossoming of your desires, but it is not their fruit.
Some of the youth seek pleasure as if it were all, and they are judged and rebuked. I would not judge nor rebuke them. I would have them seek. For they shall find pleasure, but not her alone;
And some of your elders remember pleasures with regret like wrongs committed in drunkenness.
And there are among you those who are neither young to seek nor old to remember; And in their fear of seeking and remembering they shun all pleasures, lest they neglect the spirit or offend against it.
In denying yourself pleasure, you often store the desire in the recesses of your being.
Even your body knows its heritage and its rightful need and will not be deceived.
And your body is the harp of your soul, and it is yours to bring forth sweet music from it or confused sounds.
Go to your fields and your gardens, and you shall learn that it is the pleasure of the bee to gather honey of the flower, but it is also the pleasure of the flower to yield its honey to the bee.
For to the bee, a flower is a fountain of life, and the flower, a bee is a messenger of love. And to both bee and flower, the giving and the receiving of pleasure is a need and an ecstasy.

Beauty:

Beauty is a thing of might and dread.
Like the tempest, she shakes the earth beneath us and the sky above us.”
Beauty is not a need but an ecstasy.
It is not the sap within the furrowed bark nor a wing attached to a claw, but rather a garden forever in bloom and a flock of angels forever in flight.
Beauty is life when life unveils her holy face. But you are life, and you are the veil.
Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror. But you are eternity, and you are the mirror.

Religion:

Who can separate his faith from his actions or his belief from his occupations?
Who can spread his hours before him, saying, “This for God and this for myself; This for my soul, and this other for my body?”
All your hours are wings that beat through space from self to self.
Your daily life is your temple and your religion. Whenever you enter into it, take with you your all.
The freest song comes not through bars and wires. And he to whom worshipping is a window, to open but also to shut, has not yet visited the house of his soul, whose windows are from dawn to dawn.
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.

Death:

You would know the secret of death. But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life?
For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.
Your fear of death is but the trembling of the shepherd when he stands before the king whose hand is to be laid upon him in honor.
Is the shepherd not joyful beneath his trembling that he shall wear the mark of the king?
Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing. And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb. And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then you shall truly dance.

Farewell:

Less hasty am I than the wind, yet I must go. We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way, begin no day where we have ended another day; and no sunrise finds us where sunset left us. Even while the earth sleeps, we travel.
The mist that drifts away at dawn, leaving but dew in the fields, shall rise and gather into a cloud and then fall down in rain.
You have been told that, even like a chain, you are as weak as your weakest link. This is but half the truth. You are also as strong as your strongest link.
To measure you by your smallest deed is to reckon the power of the ocean by the frailty of its foam.
To judge you by your failures is to cast blame upon the seasons for their inconstancy.
Your thoughts and my words are waves from a sealed memory that keeps records of our yesterdays, And of the ancient days when the earth knew not us nor herself, and of nights when the earth was upwrought with confusion.
It is a flame spirit in you ever gathering more of itself while you, heedless of its expansion, bewail the withering of your days.
It is life in quest of life in bodies that fear the grave.
You have given me my deeper thirst after life. Surely there is no greater gift to a man than that which turn all his aims into parching lips and all life into a fountain.
Verily the kindness that gazes upon itself in a mirror turns to stone, and a good deed that calls itself by tender names becomes the parent to a curse.
Vague and nebulous is the beginning of all things, but not their end, And I fain would have you remember me as a beginning.
That which seems most feeble and bewildered in you is the strongest and most determined.
The veil that clouds your eyes shall be lifted by the hands that wove it, And the clay that fills your ears shall be pierced by those fingers that kneaded it. And you shall see, And you shall hear. Yet you shall not deplore having known blindness nor regret having been deaf.
For in that day, you shall know the hidden purposes in all things, And you shall bless the darkness as you would bless the light
If in the twilight of memory we should meet once more, we shall speak again together and you shall sing to me a deeper song.
And if our hands should meet in another dream, we shall build another tower in the sky.

This summary is not intended to replace the original book, all quotes and insights are credited to the author and publisher. Thank you.

Kahlil Gibran (Arabic: جبران خليل جبران ) was a Lebanese American artist, poet, and writer.
Born in the town of Bsharri in modern-day Lebanon (then part of Ottoman Mount Lebanon), as a young man he emigrated with his family to the United States where he studied art and began his literary career.

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