This is a quote from the book The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran.
Quote by Kahlil Gibran, “And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.”
Have you read this book? I’d love to hear your thoughts in a comment below!
If you’re interested, you can read an excerpt from the book here.
The Prophet – Summary
Here is the book summary from Goodreads:
Kahlil Gibran’s masterpiece, The Prophet, is one of the most beloved classics of our time. Published in 1923, it has been translated into more than twenty languages, and the American editions alone have sold more than nine million copies.
The Prophet is a collection of poetic essays that are philosophical, spiritual, and, above all, inspirational. Gibran’s musings are divided into twenty-eight chapters covering such sprawling topics as love, marriage, children, giving, eating and drinking, work, joy and sorrow, housing, clothes, buying and selling, crime and punishment, laws, freedom, reason and passion, pain, self-knowledge, teaching, friendship, talking, time, good and evil, prayer, pleasure, beauty, religion, and death.
This is an excerpt from the book The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran.
And the weaver said, “Speak to us of Clothes.”
And he answered:
Your clothes conceal much of your beauty, yet they hide not the unbeautiful.
And though you seek in garments the freedom of privacy you may find in them a harness and a chain.
Would that you could meet the sun and the wind with more of your skin and less of your raiment, for the breath of life is in the sunlight and the hand of life is in the wind.
Some of you say, “It is the north wind who has woven the clothes we wear.”
And I say, Ay, it was the north wind,
But shame was his loom, and the softening of the sinews was his thread.
And when his work was done he laughed in the forest.
Forget not that modesty is for a shield against the eye of the unclean.
And when the unclean shall be no more, what were modesty but a fetter and a fouling of the mind?
And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.
Have you read this book? I’d love to hear your thoughts in a comment below!
The Prophet – Summary
Here is the book summary from Goodreads:
Kahlil Gibran’s masterpiece, The Prophet, is one of the most beloved classics of our time. Published in 1923, it has been translated into more than twenty languages, and the American editions alone have sold more than nine million copies.
The Prophet is a collection of poetic essays that are philosophical, spiritual, and, above all, inspirational. Gibran’s musings are divided into twenty-eight chapters covering such sprawling topics as love, marriage, children, giving, eating and drinking, work, joy and sorrow, housing, clothes, buying and selling, crime and punishment, laws, freedom, reason and passion, pain, self-knowledge, teaching, friendship, talking, time, good and evil, prayer, pleasure, beauty, religion, and death.
This is an excerpt from The Broken Wings by Kahlil Gibran, discovered in the anthology of his work called The Voice of Kahlil Gibran, translated by A.R. Ferris.
The most beautiful word on the lips of mankind is the word ‘Mother’, and the most beautiful call is the call of ‘My mother’. It is a word full of hope and love, a sweet and kind word coming from the depths of the heart. The mother is everything – she is our consolation in sorrow, our hope in misery, and our strength in weakness. She is the source of love, mercy, sympathy, and forgiveness. He who loses his mother loses a pure soul who blesses and guards him constantly.
Everything in nature bespeaks the mother. The sun is the mother of earth and gives it its nourishment of heat; it never leaves the universe at night until it has put the earth to sleep to the song of the sea and the hymn of birds and brooks. And this earth is the mother of trees and flowers. It produces them, nurses them, and weans them. The trees and flowers become kind mothers of their great fruits and seeds. And the mother, the prototype of all existence, is the eternal spirit, full of beauty and love…The word mother is hidden in our hearts, and it comes upon our lips in hours of sorrow and happiness as the perfume comes from the heart of the rose and mingles with clear and cloudy air.
Have you read this book? I’d love to hear your thoughts in a comment below!
Book Summary
Here are the book summaries from Goodreads, for both The Broken Wings and The Voice of Kahlil Gibran:
Millions all over the world have responded to the message of Kahlil Gibrana as recorded in his masterpiece, “The Prophet”. In the style that gave Gibran the title of “Dante of the Twentieth Century”, “The Voice of the Master” speaks stirringly of the victory of faith over grief, and love over loneliness. “Of Marriage”, “Of the Divinity of Man”, “Of Reason and Knowledge”, “Of Love and Equality”, –these are some of the themes Gibran searches in this volume, offering fresh insight into many of life’s most perplexing riddles.
This is the exquisitely tender story of love that beats desperately against the taboos of Oriental tradition. With great sensitivity, Gibran describes his passion as a youth for Selma Karamy, the girl of Beirut who first unfolded to him the secrets of love. But it is a love that is doomed by a social convention which forces Selma into marriage with another man. Portraying the happiness and infinite sorrow of his relationship with Selma, Gibran at the same time probes the spiritual meaning of human existence with profound compassion.
This is an excerpt from The Forerunner by Kahlil Gibran, discovered in the anthology of his work called The Voice of Kahlil Gibran.
Four poets were sitting around a bowl of punch that stood on a table.
Said the first poet, ‘Methinks I see with my third eye the fragrance of this wine hovering in space like a cloud of birds in an enchanted forest.’
The second poet raised his head and said, ‘With my inner ear I can hear those mist-birds singing. And the melody holds my heart as the white rose imprisons the bee within her petals.’
The third poet closed his eyes and stretched his arm upwards, and said, ‘I touch them with my hand. I feel their wings, like the breath of a sleeping fairy, brushing against my fingers.’
Then the fourth poet rose and lifted up the bowl, and he said, ‘Alas, friends! I am too dull of sight and of hearing and of touch. I cannot see the fragrance of this wine, nor hear its song, nor feel the beating of its wings. I perceive but the wine itself. Now therefore must I drink it, that it may sharpen my senses and raise me to your blissful heights.’
And putting the bowl to his lips, he drank the punch to the very last drop.
The three poets, with their mouths open, looked at him aghast, and there was a thirsty, yet unlyrical hatred in their eyes.
Have you read this book? I’d love to hear your thoughts in a comment below!
Book Summary
Here are the book summaries from Goodreads, for both The Forerunner and The Voice of Kahlil Gibran:
Millions all over the world have responded to the message of Kahlil Gibrana as recorded in his masterpiece, “The Prophet”. In the style that gave Gibran the title of “Dante of the Twentieth Century”, “The Voice of the Master” speaks stirringly of the victory of faith over grief, and love over loneliness. “Of Marriage”, “Of the Divinity of Man”, “Of Reason and Knowledge”, “Of Love and Equality”, –these are some of the themes Gibran searches in this volume, offering fresh insight into many of life’s most perplexing riddles.
“I do not think the East has spoken with so beautiful a voice since the Gitanjali of Rabindranath Tagore …” – G. W. Russell
“Kahlil Gibran, Lebanese poet, philosopher and painter, occupies a unique position in today’s world. His name is synonymous with peace, spiritual values and international understanding.”