The Prophet (Clydesdale Classics)

by Kahlil Gibran

Ready am I to go, and my eagerness with sails full set awaits the wind.

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

And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

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.

Love one another, but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

It is when you give of yourself that you truly give. For what are your possessions but things you keep and guard for fear you may need them to-morrow?

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.

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.

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

For reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction. Therefore let your soul exalt your reason to the height of passion, that it may sing; And let it direct your passion with reason, that your passion may live through its own daily resurrection, and like the phoenix rise above its own ashes.

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.

The soul unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals.

If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind.

He is a teacher

And let your best be for your friend. 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 what is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst?

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.

For to the bee a flower is a fountain of life, And to 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 is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror. But you are eternity and you are the mirror.