WM-ST-47
U
UNAWARENESS
The human heart cries out for help; the human soul implores us for deliverance; but we do not heed their cries, for we neither hear nor understand. But the man who hears and understands we call mad, and flee from him.
Thus the nights pass, and we live in unawareness; and the days greet us and embrace us. But we live in constant dread of day and night.
WM-ST-47
UNSEEN
The subtlest beauties in our life are unseen and unheard.
SP-ST-30
The Jews, my beloved, awaited the coming of a Messiah, who had been promised them, and who was to deliver them from bondage.
And the Great Soul of the World sensed that the worship of Jupiter and Minerva no longer availed, for the thirsty hearts of men could not be quenched with that wine.
In Rome men pondered the divinity of Apollo, a god without pity, and the beauty of Venus already fallen into decay.
For deep in their hearts, though they did not understand it, these nations hungered and thirsted for the supreme teaching that would transcend any to be found on the earth. They yearned for the spirit’s freedom that would teach man to rejoice with his neighbor at the light of the sun and the wonder of living. For it is this cherished freedom that brings man close to the Unseen, which he can approach without fear or shame.
WM-ST-92
V
VIRGIN
There is no secret in the mystery of life stronger and more beautiful than that attachment which converts the silence of a virgin’s spirit into a perpetual awareness that makes a person forget the past, for it kindles fiercely in the heart the sweet and overwhelming hope of the coming future.
SR-T-264
W
WAR
You are my brother, but why are you quarreling with me? Why do you invade my country and try to subjugate me for the sake of pleasing those who are seeking glory and authority?
Why do you leave your wife and children and follow Death to the distant land for the sake of those who buy glory with your blood, and high honour with your mother’s tears?
Is it an honour for a man to kill his brother man? If you deem it an honour, let it be an act of worship, and erect a temple to Cain who slew his brother Abel.
TL-T-7
Can lovers meet and exchange kisses on battlefields still acrid with bomb fumes?
Will the poet compose his songs under stars veiled in gun smoke?
Will the musician strum his lute in a night whose silence was ravished by terror?
TM-ST-98
WAY TO GOD
Perhaps we are nearer to Him each time we try to divide Him and find Him indivisible. Yet do I say that art, through drawing a line between the beautiful and the ugly, is the nearest way to God. Pure meditation is another way. But it leads to silence and to self-confinement. Silence is truer and more expressive than speech; and the hour shall come when we shall be silent. But why muzzle our tongues before that hour has struck? There is your friend Lao Tze; he became silent, but when? After he gave to the world the gist of his faith in words.
KG-P-96
WEAKNESS
That deed which in our guilt we today call weakness, will appear tomorrow as an essential link in the complete chain of Man.
WM-ST-32
WEALTH
In some countries, the parent’s wealth is a source of misery for the children. The wide strong box which the father and mother together have used for the safety of their wealth becomes a narrow, dark prison for the souls of their heirs. The Almighty Dinar which the people worship becomes a demon which punishes the spirit and deadens the heart.
BW-ST-64
WILL
To Will belongs the Right. For Souls
When strong prevail, when weak become
Subject to changes, good and bad,
And with the wind may go and come.
Then, deny not that Will in Soul
Is greater than the Might of Arm,
And weakling only mounts the throne
Of those beyond the good and harm.
P-50
WINGS
God has given you a spirit with wings on which to soar into the spacious firmament of Love and Freedom. Is it not pitiful then that you cut your wings with your own hands and suffer your soul to crawl like an insect upon the earth?
WM-ST-67
WISDOM
The wise man is he who loves and reveres God. A man’s merit lies in his knowledge and in his deeds, not in his color, faith, race, or descent. For remember, my friend, the son of a shepherd who possesses knowledge is of greater worth to a nation than the heir to the throne, if he be ignorant. Knowledge is your true patent of nobility, no matter who your father or what your race may be.
WM-ST-61
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.
MS-72
WOMAN
A woman whom Providence has provided with beauty of spirit and body is a truth, at the same time both open and secret, which we can understand only by love, and touch only by virtue; and when we attempt to describe such a woman she disappears like a vapor.
BW-ST-39
Women opened the windows of my eyes and the doors of my spirit. Had it not been for the woman-mother, the woman-sister, and the woman-friend, I would have been sleeping among those who seek the tranquility of the world with their snoring.
SP-P-31
Writers and poets try to understand the truth about woman. But until this day they have never understood her heart because, looking upon her through the veil of desire, they see nothing except the shape of her body. Or they look upon her through a magnifying glass of spite and find nothing in her but weakness and submission.
S
WOMAN’S HEART
A woman’s heart will not change with time or season; even if it dies eternally, it will never perish. A woman’s heart is like a field turned into a battleground; after the trees are uprooted and the grass is burned and the rocks are reddened with blood and the earth is planted with bones and skulls, it is calm and silent as if nothing has happened; for the spring and autumn come at their intervals and resume their work.
BW-ST-71
WORDS
Wisdom is not in words;
Wisdom is meaning within words.
MS-74
WORSHIP
God does not like to be worshipped by an ignorant man who imitates someone else.
SR-T-267
WORTH
If, your knowledge teaches you not to rise above human weakness and misery and lead your fellow man on the right path, you are indeed a man of little worth and will remain such till Judgment Day.
WM-ST-63
WRITER
Are you a writer who holds his head high above the crowd, while his brain is deep in the abyss of the past, that is filled with the tatters and useless cast-offs of the ages? If so, you are like a stagnant pool of water.
Or are you the keen thinker, who scrutinizes his inner self, discarding that which is useless, outworn and evil, but preserving that which is useful and good? If so, you are as manna to the hungry, and as cool, clear water to the thirsty.
WM-ST-36
Y
YOUTH
Youth is a beautiful dream, on whose brightness books shed a blinding dust. Will ever the day come when the wise link the joy of knowledge to youth’s dream? Will ever the day come when Nature becomes the teacher of man, humanity his book and life his school? Youth’s joyous purpose cannot be fulfilled until that day comes. Too slow is our march toward spiritual elevation, because we make so little use of youth’s ardor.
TM-ST-55
Beauty belongs to youth, but the youth for whom this earth was made is naught but a dream whose sweetness is enslaved to a blindness that renders its awareness too late. Will ever the day come when the wise will band together the sweet dreams of youth and the
joy of knowledge? Each is but naught when in solitary existence.
T-302
YOUTH AND AGE
Mankind divided into two long columns, one composed of the aged and bent, who support themselves on crooked staves, and as they walk on the path of Life, they pant as if they were climbing toward a mountaintop, while they are actually descending into the abyss.
And the second column is composed of youth, running as with winged feet, singing as if their throats were strung with silver strings, and climbing toward the mountaintop as though drawn by some irresistible, magic power.
WM-ST-36
Until when shall the people remain 1asleep?
Until when shall they continue to glorify those
Who attained greatness by moments of advantage?
How long shall they ignore those who enable
Them to see the beauty of their spirit,
Symbol of peace and love?
Until when shall human beings honor the dead
And forget the living, who spend their lives
Encircled in misery, and who consume themselves
Like burning candles to illuminate the way
For the ignorant and lead them into the path of light?
TL-T-300
IMAGE GALLERY
Kahlil Gibran
Photograph by Fred Holland Day, circa 1898
The Louise Imogen Guiney Collection, Library of Congress,
Prints & Photographs Division
Kahlil Gibran
April 1913
Self Portrait and Muse, 1911 (colour litho) by Khalil Gibran
(1883-1931) Private Collection/ Archives Charmet/ The Bridgeman Art Library
Nationality / copyright status: Lebanese / out of copyright
Gibran is beloved as the author of The Prophet by the people of
the East as well as the West, as immortalized on this Dubai stamp.
Photograph © Golovniov / www.fotosearch.com
The Gibran Museum,
formerly the Monastery of Mar Sarkis,
Besharri, Lebanon
Photograph © Golovniov / www.fotosearch.com
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The content of The Treasured Writings of Kahlil Gibran is composed of works originally published in:
A Treasury of Kahlil Gibran, translated by Anthony Rizcallah Ferris and edited by Martin L. Wolf, copyright 1951 by The Citadel Press, a division of Lyle Stuart Inc. and copyright 1947 and 1949 by Philosophical Library, Inc.
A Second Treasury of Kahlil Gibran, translated by Anthony R. Ferris, copyright © 1962 by The Citadel Press, a division of Lyle Stuart Inc. and copyright © 1957, 1958, 1959 and 1960 by Anthony R. Ferris.
A Third Treasury of Kahlil Gibran, edited by Andrew Dib Sherfan, copyright © 1975, 1973, 1966, 1965 by Philosophical Library, Inc.
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Treasured Writings of Kahlil Gibran Page 62