As a fellow Lebanese poet/philosopher, Khalil Gibran was an escapable & formative influence (for me as a teenager). His art reminded me of William Blake and like Blake, his poet verged on prophecy...
As a young man, I had the good fortune (around two decades ago) to take a day trip to the resplendently green Bshirri, in Lebanon, to pay my respects to the Gibran museum/monastery/room and tomb.
I was struck by the words on his epitaph:
I am alive like you … Close your eyes and look around, you will see me in front of you.
I thought as I stepped outside, yes, one has only to open their eyes and look around; the mountains are alive with poetry.
The Prophet is, justly, his masterpiece and reading Gibran is also reading his great influences: Blake, Nietzsche as well as the Bible. If Gibran were not able to touch the core of life in his work, it would not still be universal, today.
For those of you who appreciate his writing, and might not have read past The Prophet, I highly recommend his Sand & Foam, a slender collection of aphorisms, that I think features some of his best short meditations.
In fact, Sand and Foam made such a lasting impression on me, that I believe it contributed to my becoming an aphorist, myself, in my early twenties:
Happy Birthday, Gibran Khalil Gibran, dear compatriot and early mentor. Below, are 11 stirring excerpts from various works of his I return to 🙏🏼
"Your daily life is your temple and your religion."
When you enter into it take with you your all.
I have found both freedom and safety in my madness; the freedom of loneliness and the safety from being understood, for those who understand us enslave something in us.
We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.
Generosity is giving more than you can, and pride is taking less than you need.
To belittle, you have to be little.
We often borrow from our tomorrows to pay our debts to our yesterdays
And in much of your talking, thinking is half murdered. For thought is a bird of space, that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly.
When God threw me, a pebble, into this wondrous lake I disturbed its surface with countless circles.
But when I reached the depths, I became very still.
Dig anywhere in the earth and you will find a treasure, only you must dig with the faith of a peasant.
Faith is an oasis in the heart which will never be reached by the caravan of thinking.
The significance of man is not in what he attains, but rather in what he longs to attain."