(SELF PORTRAIT AND MUSE, 1911)
Khalil Gibran was born January 6, 1883 in Bsharri,Lebanon; died April 10, 1931 in New York City, United States. He was a LebaneseAmerican artist, poet, writer, philosopher and theologian. He was born in Lebanon when it was the Mount Lebanon Province of the Ottoman Empire. He spent most of his life in the United States. He is the third bestselling poet in history after William Shakespeare and Lao Tse.
Your Children are not Your Children They are the sons and daughters of life'slonging for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
(From “Prophet”)
Speak to us of self-knowledge
(KhalilGibran , from 'The Prophet') And a man said, speak to us ofself-knowledge.
and he answered, saying:
Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and the nights.
But your ears thirst for the sound of your heart's knowledge.
You would know in words that which you have always known in thought.
You would touch with your fingers the naked body of your dreams.
And it is well that you should.
The hidden well-spring of your soul must needs rise and run murmuring to the sea;
and the treasure of your infinite depths would be revealed to your eyes.
But let there be no scales to weigh your unknown treasure;
And seek not the depths of your knowledge with staff or sounding line.
For self is a sea boundless and measureless. ...
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