"Where is the justice of political power if it executes the murderer and jails the plunderer, and then itself marches upon neighboring lands, killing thousands and pillaging the very hills?" -- Khalil Gibran
Khalil Gibran (born Gubran Khalil Gubranbin Mikh?'?l bin Sa'ad; Arabic , January 6, 1883 — April 10, 1931) also known as Kahlil Gibran, was a Lebanese American artist, poet, and writer. Born in the town of Bsharri in modern-day Lebanon (then part of the Ottoman Mount Lebanon mutasarrifate), as a young man he immigrated with his family to the United States where he studied art and began his literary career. He is chiefly known for his 1923 book The Prophet, a series of philosophical essays written in English prose. An early example of Inspirational fiction, the book sold well despite a cool critical reception, and became extremely popular in the 1960s counterculture. Gibran is the third best-selling poet of all time, behind Shakespeare and Lao-Tzu.
"A friend who is far away is sometimes much nearer than one who is at hand. Is not the mountain far more awe-inspiring and more clearly visible to one passing through the valley than to those who inhabit the mountain?""A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle.""Advance, and never halt, for advancing is perfection. Advance and do not fear the thorns in the path, for they draw only corrupt blood.""All our words are but crumbs that fall down from the feast of the mind.""All that spirits desire, spirits attain.""And ever has it been known that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.""And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.""Art is a step from what is obvious and well-known toward what is arcane and concealed.""Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.""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.""Coming generations will learn equality from poverty, and love from woes.""Death most resembles a prophet who is without honor in his own land or a poet who is a stranger among his people.""Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.""Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.""Exaggeration is truth that has lost its temper.""Faith is a knowledge within the heart, beyond the reach of proof.""Faith is an oasis in the heart which will never be reached by the caravan of thinking.""For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.""Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.""Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity.""Generosity is giving more than you can, and pride is taking less than you need.""Generosity is not giving me that which I need more than you do, but it is giving me that which you need more than I do.""Hallow the body as a temple to comeliness and sanctify the heart as a sacrifice to love; love recompenses the adorers.""I existed from all eternity and, behold, I am here; and I shall exist till the end of time, for my being has no end.""I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers.""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.""I prefer to be a dreamer among the humblest, with visions to be realized, than lord among those without dreams and desires.""I wash my hands of those who imagine chattering to be knowledge, silence to be ignorance, and affection to be art.""If my survival caused another to perish, then death would be sweeter and more beloved.""If the grandfather of the grandfather of Jesus had known what was hidden within him, he would have stood humble and awe-struck before his soul.""If the other person injures you, you may forget the injury; but if you injure him you will always remember.""If you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work.""If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. And if they don't, they never were.""If you reveal your secrets to the wind, you should not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees.""If your heart is a volcano, how shall you expect flowers to bloom?""In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.""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.""Knowledge cultivates your seeds and does not sow in you seeds.""Knowledge of the self is the mother of all knowledge. So it is incumbent on me to know my self, to know it completely, to know its minutiae, its characteristics, its subtleties, and its very atoms.""Let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.""Life without liberty is like a body without spirit.""Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit.""Love and doubt have never been on speaking terms.""Love is trembling happiness.""Love one another, but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.""Love possesses not nor will it be possessed, for love is sufficient unto love.""Love... it surrounds every being and extends slowly to embrace all that shall be.""Many a doctrine is like a window pane. We see truth through it but it divides us from truth.""March on. Do not tarry. To go forward is to move toward perfection. March on, and fear not the thorns, or the sharp stones on life's path.""Most people who ask for advice from others have already resolved to act as it pleases them.""Much of your pain is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.""No man can reveal to you nothing but that which already lies half-asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.""Nor shall derision prove powerful against those who listen to humanity or those who follow in the footsteps of divinity, for they shall live forever. Forever.""Of life's two chief prizes, beauty and truth, I found the first in a loving heart and the second in a laborer's hand.""Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.""Pain and foolishness lead to great bliss and complete knowledge, for Eternal Wisdom created nothing under the sun in vain.""Perplexity is the beginning of knowledge.""Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.""Poverty is a veil that obscures the face of greatness. An appeal is a mask covering the face of tribulation.""Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing toward what will be.""Rebellion without truth is like spring in a bleak, arid desert.""Sadness is but a wall between two gardens.""Safeguarding the rights of others is the most noble and beautiful end of a human being.""Say not, 'I have found the truth,' but rather, 'I have found a truth.'""The eye of a human being is a microscope, which makes the world seem bigger than it really is.""The just is close to the people's heart, but the merciful is close to the heart of God.""The lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and then becomes a host, and then a master.""The most pitiful among men is he who turns his dreams into silver and gold.""The obvious is that which is never seen until someone expresses it simply.""The person you consider ignorant and insignificant is the one who came from God, that he might learn bliss from grief and knowledge from gloom.""The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind.""There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward.""They consider me to have sharp and penetrating vision because I see them through the mesh of a sieve.""Time has been transformed, and we have changed; it has advanced and set us in motion; it has unveiled its face, inspiring us with bewilderment and exhilaration.""To be able to look back upon ones life in satisfaction, is to live twice.""To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but at what he aspires to.""Trust in dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.""Truth is a deep kindness that teaches us to be content in our everyday life and share with the people the same happiness.""We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.""What difference is there between us, save a restless dream that follows my soul but fears to come near you?""What is this world that is hastening me toward I know not what, viewing me with contempt?""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.""When we turn to one another for counsel we reduce the number of our enemies.""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.""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.""When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music. Which of you would be a reed, dumb and silent, when all else sings together in unison?""Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it becomes too proud to weep, too grave to laugh, and too selfish to seek other than itself.""Wisdom stands at the turn in the road and calls upon us publicly, but we consider it false and despise its adherents.""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.""Would that I were a dry well, and that the people tossed stones into me, for that would be easier than to be a spring of flowing water that the thirsty pass by, and from which they avoid drinking.""Yesterday is but today's memory, and tomorrow is today's dream.""Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love.""You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.""You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.""You have your ideology and I have mine.""You pray in your distress and in your need; would that you might also pray in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance.""Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They came through you but not from you and though they are with you yet they belong not to you.""Your daily life is your temple and your religion. When you enter into it take with you your all.""Your friend is your needs answered.""Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens.""Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.""Zeal is a volcano, the peak of which the grass of indecisiveness does not grow."
Gibran was born in the Christian Maronite town of Bsharri (in modern day northern Lebanon) to the daughter of a Maronite priest. His mother Kamila was thirty when he was born; his father, also named Khalil, was her third husband. As a result of his family's poverty, Gibran received no formal schooling during his youth. However, priests visited him regularly and taught him about the Bible, as well as the Arabic and Syriac languages.
Gibran's father initially worked in an apothecary but, with gambling debts he was unable to pay, he went to work for a local Ottoman-appointed administrator.
Around 1891, extensive complaints by angry subjects led to the administrator being removed and his staff being investigated. Gibran's father was imprisoned for alleged embezzlement, and his family's property was confiscated by the authorities. With no home, Kamila Gibran decided to follow her brother to the United States. Although Gibran's father was released in 1894, Kamila remained resolved and left for New York on June 25, 1895, taking Khalil, his younger sisters Mariana and Sultana, and his elder half-brother Peter(/Bhutros/Butrus).
In the United States
The Gibrans settled in Boston's South End, at the time the second largest Syrian/Lebanese-American community in the United States. Due to a mistake at school he was registered as Kahlil Gibran.
His mother began working as a seamstress peddler, selling lace and linens that she carried from door to door. Gibran started school on September 30, 1895. School officials placed him in a special class for immigrants to learn English. Gibran also enrolled in an art school at a nearby settlement house. Through his teachers there, he was introduced to the avant-garde Boston artist, photographer, and publisher Fred Holland Day, who encouraged and supported Gibran in his creative endeavors. A publisher used some of Gibran's drawings for book covers in 1898.
Gibran's mother, along with his elder brother Peter, wanted him to absorb more of his own heritage rather than just the Western aesthetic culture he was attracted to, so at the age of fifteen, Gibran returned to his homeland to study at a Maronite-run preparatory school and higher-education institute in Beirut. He started a student literary magazine with a classmate and was elected "college poet". He stayed there for several years before returning to Boston in 1902, coming through Ellis Island on May 10. Two weeks before he got back, his sister Sultana died of tuberculosis at the age of 14. The next year, Peter died of the same disease and his mother died of cancer. His sister Marianna supported Gibran and herself by working at a dressmaker’s shop.
Gibran held his first art exhibition of his drawings in 1904 in Boston, at Day’s studio. During this exhibition, Gibran met Mary Elizabeth Haskell, a respected headmistress ten years his senior. The two formed an important friendship that lasted the rest of Gibran’s life. Though publicly discreet, their correspondence reveals an exalted intimacy . Haskell influenced not only Gibran’s personal life, but also his career . In 1908, Gibran went to study art with Auguste Rodin in Paris for two years. While there he met his art study partner and lifelong friend Youssef Howayek. He later studied art in Boston .Juliet Thompson, one of Gibran's acquaintances, reported several anecdotes relating to Gibran: She recalls Gibran met `Abdu'l-Bahá, the leader of the Bahá’í Faith at the time of his visit to the United States, circa 1911-1912. Barbara Young, in “This Man from Lebanon: A Study of Khalil Gibran”, records Gibran was unable to sleep the night before meeting `Abdu’l-Bahá who sat for a pair of portraits. Thompson reports Gibran saying that all the way through writing of “Jesus, The Son of Man”, he thought of `Abdu’l-Bahá. Years later, after the death of `Abdu’l-Bahá, there was a viewing of the movie recording of `Abdu’l-Bahá - Gibran rose to talk and in tears, proclaimed an exalted station of `Abdu’l-Bahá and left the event weeping.
While most of Gibran's early writings were in Arabic, most of his work published after 1918 was in English. His first book for the publishing company Alfred A. Knopf, in 1918, was The Madman, a slim volume of aphorisms and parables written in biblical cadence somewhere between poetry and prose. Gibran also took part in the New York Pen League, also known as the "immigrant poets" (al-mahjar), alongside important Lebanese-American authors such as Ameen Rihani, Elia Abu Madi and Mikhail Naimy, a close friend and distinguished master of Arabic literature, whose descendants Gibran declared to be his own children, and whose nephew, Samir, is a godson of Gibran's.
Much of Gibran's writings deal with Christianity, especially on the topic of spiritual love. His poetry is notable for its use of formal language, as well as insights on topics of life using spiritual terms. Gibran's best-known work is The Prophet, a book composed of twenty-six poetic essays. The book became especially popular during the 1960s with the American counterculture and New Age movements. Since it was first published in 1923, The Prophet has never been out of print. Having been translated into more than forty languages, it was one of the bestselling books of the twentieth century in the United States.
One of his most notable lines of poetry in the English-speaking world is from "Sand and Foam" (1926), which reads : “Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it so that the other half may reach you”. This line was used by John Lennon and placed, though in a slightly altered form, into the song Julia from The Beatles' 1968 album The Beatles (a.k.a. "The White Album").
"Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors.But today we kneel only before the truth"-Kahlil Gibran
Gibran called for the adoption of Arabic as a national language of Syria and the application of Arabic at all school levels. When Gibran met `Abdu'l-Bahá in 1911-12, who traveled to the United States partly to promote peace, Gibran admired the teachings on peace but argued that Syrian lands should be freed from Ottoman control. Gibran also wrote the famous "Pity The Nation" poem during these years which was posthumously published in The Garden of the Prophet.
When the Ottomans were finally driven out of Syria during World War I, Gibran's exhilaration was manifested in a sketch called "Free Syria" which appeared on the front page of al-Sa'ih's special "victory" edition. Moreover, in a draft of a play, still kept among his papers, Gibran expressed great hope for national independence and progress. This play, according to Khalil Hawi, "defines Gibran's belief in Syrian nationalism with great clarity, distinguishing it from both Lebanese and Arab nationalism, and showing us that nationalism lived in his mind, even at this late stage, side by side with internationalism."
Gibran died in New York City on April 10, 1931: the cause was determined to be cirrhosis of the liver and tuberculosis. Before his death, Gibran expressed the wish that he be buried in Lebanon. This wish was fulfilled in 1932, when Mary Haskell and his sister Mariana purchased the Mar Sarkis Monastery in Lebanon, which has since become the Gibran Museum. The words written next to Gibran's grave are "a word I want to see written on my grave: I am alive like you, and I am standing beside you. Close your eyes and look around, you will see me in front of you ...."
Gibran willed the contents of his studio to Mary Haskell. There she discovered her letters to him spanning twenty-three years. She initially agreed to burn them because of their intimacy, but recognizing their historical value she saved them. She gave them, along with his letters to her which she had also saved, to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library before she died in 1964. Excerpts of the over six hundred letters were published in "Beloved Prophet" in 1972.
Mary Haskell Minis (she wed Jacob Florance Minis in 1923) donated her personal collection of nearly one hundred original works of art by Gibran to the Telfair Museum of Art in Savannah, Georgia in 1950. Haskell had been thinking of placing her collection at the Telfair as early as 1914. In a letter to Gibran, she wrote "I am thinking of other museums ... the unique little Telfair Gallery in Savannah, Ga., that Gari Melchers chooses pictures for. There when I was a visiting child, form burst upon my astonished little soul." Haskell's gift to the Telfair is the largest public collection of Gibran’s visual art in the country, consisting of five oils and numerous works on paper rendered in the artist’s lyrical style, which reflects the influence of symbolism. The future American royalties to his books were willed to his hometown of Bsharri, to be "used for good causes"; but this led to years of controversy and violence over the distribution of the money, and eventually the Lebanese government became the overseer.
A phrase from The Prophet is read aloud by Norma Shearer's character in The Women just before her daughter gives her the information that sends her to get her husband back.
The Prophet is seen in the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line when June Carter hands it to J.R. to read in the motel.
Gibran is quoted in South Central , "You may tie my hands with chains and my feet with shackles, and put me in the dark prison, but you shall not enslave my thinking, for it is free, like the breeze in the spacious sky."
Gibran's poem, "For What is it to Die", is read during a funeral in Todd Field's 2001 film, In the Bedroom.
Lines from Gibran's poem "On Love" from his book The Prophet are read to a sleeping Rachel in the movie The Poet (US title Hearts of War).
"Your children are not your children...", a phrase from The Prophet was used by Lualhati Bautista in her book Dekada '70 (Decade '70's), where Jules, a radical and the eldest son of Amanda Bartolome, told his mother that she has nothing to do with his ideology. The original novel though is written in Filipino, and the phrase was translated to Filipino.
Music
The Egyptian-Australian Oud Virtuoso, Joseph Tawadros wrote an entire album to Gibran's 'The Prophet' 2009
The Lebanese Tenor Gabriel Abdel Nour dedicated a complete album to Gibran, Gabriel Abdel Nour sings Gibran Khalil Gibran, where all the songs were extracts from Gibran's writings. Gabriel is the only singer to dedicate a complete album to Gibran. He has celebrated as well the memorial of Gibran in different countries.
The song Broken Wings, a US #1 hit for the band Mr. Mister was inspired by Gibran's book of the same name.
The Egyptian Singer Tony Kaldas presented in 2008 Big Concerts Celebrating the Jubilee 125 Years of Gibran Khalil Gibran Birth in The Egyptian Opera House and in Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt. Also, he released two new songs from Gibran Words.
Jazz saxophonist Jackie McLean's "Khalil the Prophet" is on his album Destination...Out! (1963) (Blue Note BLP 4165)
Brisbane based improvisational Jazz Quintet, The Neighbourhood Groove Collective, name 2 songs "The Firefly & the Stars" and "Love Crowns" on their second release titled "Pieces" inspired by imagery from the Prophet.
Jason Mraz's song "God Rests In Reason" on the album Selections For Friends features words from the poem "The Prophet"
The lyrics to David Bowie's "The Width of a Circle", off his album The Man Who Sold the World (1970), relates a surrealist scene in which the narrator and his doppelgänger seek the help of a blackbird, who just "laughed insane and quipped 'Khalil Gibran'".
Michigan experimental screamo band Men As Trees quote Gibran in the liner notes to their 2008 album, Weltschmerz: "We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way, begin no day where we have ended another day; and no sunrise finds us where sunset has left us."
Tyrannosaurus Rex's second album, Prophets, Seers & Sages — The Angels of the Ages, released in October 1968, was dedicated to Gibran's memory.
Guitarist Derek Trucks and blues singer Susan Tedeschi named their son Charles Khalil Trucks for saxophonist Charlie Parker, guitarist Charlie Christian, and Gibran.
His book The Prophet is mentioned and quoted in the Mad Season song, "River of Deceit". "My pain is self-chosen. At least, so The Prophet says".
The Chicago-based metal band Minsk's second album The Ritual Fires of Abandonment's lyrics are inspired by Gibran, who also is credited as an author of the lyrics in the CD booklet.
Khalil Gibran is briefly mentioned in the Common Market song "Connect For".
Khalil Gibran is referenced in the Van Morrison song "Rave On John Donne"
The a cappella ensemble Sweet Honey In The Rock's song "On Children" is a musical version of Khalil Gibran's poem by the same name.
Electronic band Children of the Bong use samples quoting from 'The Prophet' in their track 'The Veil'
Album on Atlantic Records (K50109 Stereo) (1974) *The Prophet" Khalil Gibran "A Musical Interpretation Featuring Richard Harris" ~ Produced And Composed By Arif Mardin
In The Beatles' song "Julia", John Lennon references Gibran's quote "Half of what I say is meaningless; but I say it so that the other half may reach you"
Other
Syrian mini-series titled "Gibran Khalil Gibran", broadcast on the Syrian state television in November 2008.
In the popular video game Deus Ex, one of the three possible ending quotes is Gibran's quote: "Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth..." The western spelling of his name, Kahlil Gibran, was used to credit him.
Gibran is referenced briefly in the episode "Wingmen" of the show The Boondocks. When Huey Freeman (the central character, voiced by Regina King) is asked by his grandfather to say something "deep", he recites part of the poem "On Pain" from The Prophet.
In the hit TV show One Tree Hill, Lucas Scott (Chad Michael Murray) quotes Gibran.
Gibran is referenced in the popular American sitcom Friends. Richard, played by Tom Selleck, quotes from the friendship passage of The Prophet during a meal with Chandler and Monica. (Season 6)
San Diego Padres shortstop Khalil Greene was named after Gibran.
In the 2000 TV Series The Invisible Man, main character Darien Fawkes quotes Gibran on the subject of parents and children in the season 2 episode "The Camp."
In episode 5 of season 6 of the TV series Bones, Angela Montenegro's husband attempts to win her back by quoting Gibran, albeit incorrectly: "Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation." In the show, the word "hour" is changed to "pain."
At the end of an episode of Criminal Minds, entitled "Perfect Storm", Gibran is quoted as saying "Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls. The most massive characters are seared with scars."
"Love has no other desire but to fulfil itself..." quoted in the novel Georgia by Leslie Pearse, page 571
Jodi Picoult quoted Gibran in one of her novels on one of the pages which contain just a quote, to begin another section of the story.
In his novel The Shack, William P. Young quotes Gibran at the start of the chapter titled "The Great Sadness". The quote reads, "Sadness is a wall between two gardens."
During the "Sound Bodies" episode (Third Year: 2003-2004 Season) of "Criminal Intent, Gibran is mentioned by Robert Goren as one of the authors that Connie Hale has been reading
A fashion designer from Pakistan, Nilofer Shahid, made an haute couture collection inspired from the work of Khalil Gibran in 2006.
An excerpt from Gibran’s poem “Joy and Sorrow” was also quoted by author Karen Marie Moning, in her bestselling novel Bloodfever.
