The Prophet

by Kahlil Gibran

And ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.

I am in the heart of God.”

To know the pain of too much tenderness. To be wounded by your own understanding of love; And to bleed willingly and joyfully.

But let there be spaces in your togetherness. And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another, but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

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

There are those who give little of the much which they have – and they give it for recognition and their hidden desire makes their gifts unwholesome. And there are those who have little and give it all.

iki ananem

They give as in yonder valley the myrtle breathes its fragrance into space. Through the hands of such as these God speaks, and from behind their eyes He smiles upon the earth.

Surely he who is worthy to receive his days and his nights is worthy of all else from you.

See first that you yourself deserve to be a giver, and an instrument of giving.

And when you work with love you bind your self to yourself, and to one another, and to God.

Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.

Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?

Your house is your larger body.

Verily the lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul, and then walks grinning in the funeral.

Your clothes conceal much of your beauty, yet they hide not the unbeautiful.

Forget not that modesty is for a shield against the eye of the unclean.

So the wrong-doer cannot do wrong without the hidden will of you all.