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Summary: A new Fan of Gibran
Review: I first stumbled across Gibran in a quote a firend shared with me while I was going through a divorce. The quotes on Pain, Joy and Sorrow, and Love became touchstones. This is a very touching perceptive work.
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Summary: Kahlil ( )
Review: Despite the many redeeming aspects of this moral tale, there is just no denying that kahlil was a little simple. What many mistake as genius, underneath is nothing but undeniable cold hard facts about ethics. Anyone from the womb can fathom the ideas discussed in this book. There is no reason to shroud it in a fable of unusual circumstances involving characters of little to no substance. It continues to work off the fact that what people in the past considered influential somehow and always seems to weasel its way, as a prominent piece of literature, into a time period like today where it does not belong. Im sure many people read the prophet, but it does not enrich or enlighten them in the least, and if it does it is for a brief period of time. All that was read is assumedly forgotten within minutes after it is all comprehended, to some little extent. Not bringing down the moral values this book addresses, just a dose of reality for those thinking this is revolutionary and possibly neccessary in an evil, cynical, sarcastic, and perplexing time period we find ourselves in now. Sorry, just a heads up, read it to heed it.
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Summary: Logical,rational thoughts on Love,Life,Death...PERFECTION
Review: This book was given to me as a gift before I journeyed overseas on a spiritual quest to "find myself." I never got a chance to read it until one month after I was there and I had lost my job, my relationship was very unsteady, and being so far form home, I felt completely isolated. After skipping around the book and reading sections that immediately pertained to me at that point, I cried, not out of sadness, but out of enlightenment...Gibran wrote his experiences,and his thoughts on life, but they are such detailed poetic accounts, it applies to everyone at some time, his writings have layers, and therefore this book can be read many times over, and each time a new understanding will come. "Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding..."
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Summary: Powerful look at life and all things within it.
Review: A friend read me some of the poems contained in this book one night as I visited her in Austin. I was moved by them and knew I had to read everything he had done as soon as I possibly could. The way he so eloquently expresses things I have myself struggled to say makes me appreciate the genius of this man and his powerful command of the written word. The views expressed herein on friendship, love, etc are all very dead on and feel like things I have wanted to say myself but never could find the words to express it in a way I felt did it justice. Please try some of Khalil's work, if you can appreciate poetry at all you will find his work to be amazing.
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Summary: Beauty
Review: Can anyone say that which hasn't been said about this masterpiece? "Your children are not your children... they are the children of life"... "Your joy is your sorrow unmasked"... In a world where people have endeavored to write tomes of self-help books and quasi-philosophical poetry in the hopes of it having one tenth the power, artistry, and spiritual healing power of but one of the lines of his they quote (see his quotes among the likes of everyone from M. Scott Peck to John Bradshaw, to Iyanla Vanzant, and God knows who else); in a world where just the mentioning of his name can have you looked upon questioningly, as if you should be too busy living in his world or graduating from his school of thought/artistry to bring him up to those self-thought to be equally or somehow more "sophisticated"; in a world where "genius" and "soul" and "poet" are words alternately overly and improperly used, rendering them into trivial vestiges of the superlatives of an earlier time, Kahlil Gibran's work, as if from the pen of Tammuz and Christ themselves, dances and redances into the spirit of our lives. This was my mother and father's favorite book of all time when I was a child, and I felt closer to them the more I read and grew to understand it. This is the work that under no uncertain terms taught me the power of the written word, and the glory of the sacred calling of poetry to the poet- and to the human heart. As I look back on my artistic and spiritual life, I remember reading Nietzsche's ALSO SPRACH ZARATHUSTRA and some of the Dialogues of Plato, and seeing some of his influences. I remember reading THE BROKEN WINGS and SPIRITUAL SAYINGS- treasured books of his in my father's collection- and feeling his messages leap off the page. I even remember the first public poetry reading of my work- in the same Church in the Village in New York where he first read from THE PROPHET more than seventy-five years earlier. And yet I cannot pretend at any given time in my life now or in the future (as if I'd ever want to) that I could ever outgrow the majesty of his words, his style, his teachings- his heart- as displayed so simply, sublimely and majestically in this book of the ages. Nothing about our present day world, from the art to the entertainment to the literature to the technology to the cynicism, could actually spoil one from appreciating this piece of literature. Only the feeling that it could could prevent one from actually experiencing this work; the thought that, because his messages and artistic prose regarding the highest truth and the greatest love have been so unconsciously incorporated into the lexicon of our modern, quasi-spiritual times, that he isn't saying anything we haven't already heard. Given that he wrote this book so many decades ago, perhaps today (in that context) he isn't. Do not be surprised, however, if your soul actually HEARS it all for the first time when you read this book. Kahlil Gibran's THE PROPHET is a beautiful book of poetry. Kahlil Gibran's THE PROPHET is a beautiful, beautiful, book of poetry. Nothing more, nothing less.
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Summary: Stunning....
Review: I was feeling down and low recently and a friend gave me this book. I couldn't put it down and I was astonished at how beautiful it is. It made me see the logic of love, marriage, sharing, etc.... Reading it once is never enough. It's a real gem and i don't think i'm the only person who will highly recommend it.
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Summary: Gift of Love
Review: My mom purchased two copies of this book eighteen years ago she gave me one and one to my brother i have read it many times since and have now purchased two for my children. I think in the world we live today our children need his teachings more than we did then. I has been one of the best gifts. It teaches you of every stage of life and how to see it from a different point of view. Like the fact that your children are not your children but the children of life. Or just because you are married does not mean you should drink from the same cup all the time. It teaches you that sometimes its ok to be independant and yet love and care at the same time but looking from the outside of the window.
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Summary: Good Read
Review: Its a thin book, very readable and has interesting 1-2 page thoughts on various entities like anger, children, religion, speech, silence and its COOL.........reading. Ofcourse if one needs to imbibe the thoughts of the author, it has to be consumed slowly and perhaps revisited but leaves you pretty heady and clear about certain things.
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Summary: Simple Wisdom
Review: This is one of the first (literary) books I recall reading. My mother kept a collection of Gibran's works that she often read. I was curious to see what attracted her, so I looked into them too ( I was either eight or nine at the time). I believe that was my first taste of spirituality and seemed at the time more relevant than what I was being force-fed by nuns in catechism class. Rereading Gibran now, I'm struck by the notion that Hesse must have been aware of these texts before he wrote Siddhartha. They contain many of the same themes: No one else can guide you on your path. You must select your own course. Preachers and prophets are a dime a dozen. True wisdom comes from within. The prophet's teaching on love is particularly relevant to me at this stage of my life: "For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning. Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun, So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth. Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself. He threshes you to make you naked. He sifts you to free you from your husks. He grinds you to whiteness. He kneads you until you are pliant; And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast." Look into these books. They may appear simplistic to the jaundiced eye, but they may also provide the inspiration you need to see you through life's travails.
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Summary: A Book For A Lifetime
Review: If I could only keep one book in my library, it would be this one. I have purchased many copies for loved ones and highly recommend it to anyone occassionally compelled to make sense out of a world that often doesn't make sense. Personally, it stands as a reference to help me accept the paradoxical nature of life - joy and sorrow, giving and receiving, reason and passion, etc. - and continuously brings me peace when life gets chaotic. I love the fact that each chapter is so short, so while he says a lot, it's easy to digest. I cannot recommend this book highly enough to anyone of any faith on any kind of spiritual quest!
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