Kahlil Gibran's magnum opus 'The Prophet' has been a refreshing read. Though I couldn't resonate with some of the chapters ( may be due to conflict between perspectives) , there were some fascinating quotes.

Here are some of my favorite quotes :

“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. Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup."

“Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself”

“The timeless in you is aware of life's timelessness. And knows that yesterday is but today's memory and tomorrow is today's dream.”

“To belittle, you have to be little.”

When you part from your friend, you grieve not;
For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as
the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.”

To measure you by your smallest deed is to reckon the power of the ocean
by the frailty of its foam.
To judge you by your failures is to cast blame upon the seasons for their inconstancy.”

“For what is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst?”

“The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.”

“You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts;
And when you can no longer dwell in the solitude of your heart you live in your lips, and sound is a diversion and a pastime.
And in much of your talking, thinking is half murdered.”

I know i will read this work again . I will see you again, Gibran. :)

3.5 stars on 5!
-gautam

There is a wealth of insight and wisdom in this book. I don't remember exactly when I first read it all the way through, but I regularly pull it out and read portions of it.

Here is the quote that has remained strongest in my mind over the years. I frequently recite some of these lines when I'm making a bid for the sweet blessedness of silence:

"You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts;
And when you can no longer dwell in the solitude of your heart
you live in your lips,
And sound is a diversion and a pastime.
And in much of your talking, thinking is half murdered...

...And there are those who have the truth within them, but they tell it not in words. In the bosom of such as these the spirit dwells in rhythmic silence."

Common sense and wisdom combined, written in beautifully poetic prose.

I don't know if I can write this review. I really don't. It makes me feel extremely vulnerable, to contemplate putting so much of my heart out on view for people on the internet to see. I also don't know if I have the words.

Reading this book was both devastating and awe-inspiring. I was moved beyond words, particularly when I started reading it, started to let the words wash over me, when I realized how familiar they were, not the words, but the meanings behind them. It felt like something I'd been swimming in my whole life and never realized it.

Note: The rest of this review has been withdrawn due to the recent changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.

In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smorgasbook

ليس هناك فرصة أفضل لإعادة كتابة هذه المراجعة من هذه الأيام حيث يثور الجميع من حولي على اكليشيه "خليك زي حماده", و "be like Bill"
فنبي جبران, مثل مدير أحد تلك الصفحات, يقوم بوضع أنماط محددة لحياتنا, عن طريق نصائح مباشرة مبتذلة. ومُقتي لهذا الشكل من النصائح مهما كان محتواها ومهما كان قائلها يفوق مُقت سام هاريس لنعوم تشومسكي, أو حتى مُقت كريستوفر هيتشنز للأم تريزا. وهذا لا يعني أن نصائح جبران كانت جيدة بأي حال.

الكتاب هو محاولة لمحاكاة نبي نيتشة المسمى زرادشت في كتاب "هكذا تكلم زرادشت", لكن عدد قراء كتاب جبران على الجودريدز تقريباً ضعفي قراءة كتاب نيشته.
خليط من هراء التنمية البشرية مع سجع الكهان تحت عنوان المدرسة الرومانسية لخليل جبران..
ولأجل الرومانسية باع الكتاب مبيعات هائلة؛ حيث كان مصدراً جيداً لاقتطاع عبارات عميقة بما يكفي لإرفاقها بجواب رومانسي للقرين المختار

لا تكن مثل أحد, واحظَ بتجربتك الخاصة؛ فذلك أكثر مرحاً.

Meh. This is not for me. I didn't hate this collection of prose poetry, by any means, it just didn't do anything for me. I found it boring, not inspiring. I didn't gain anything by reading this and I feel like I wasted my money tbh.

I didn't find Gibran's writing compelling, I didn't think that his choice of words was particularly beautiful or clever. This had 'ordinary' written all over it.

The prophet, Almustafa, has lived in the city of Orphalese for 12 years and is about to board a ship which will carry him home. He is stopped by a group of people, with whom he discusses topics such as life and the human condition. The book is divided into chapters dealing with love, marriage, children, giving, eating and drinking, work, joy and sorrow, houses, 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.

Each topic is given just a few pages and, honestly, there was nothing new or original in here. All of his messages came across as preachy which kind of annoyed me. When I read I want to engage with new ideas or with old ideas expressed in new ways. Gibran's prose poetry couldn't fulfil any of that. His messages came across as pretentious and somewhat removed from life: in his musings about work he actually says that it's better to beg on the streets than work without love "for if you bake bread with indifference, you bake bitter bread that feeds but half man's hunger." – beeshhh what???

He's preaching the things that we're all already familiar with: don't be overly materialistic, have an open heart, give without expecting to receive, nobody is just evil or just good, yada yada yada. His passages on food and drink actually made me chuckle: "but since you must kill to eat ... let it be an act of worship." – my vegetarian ass can't relate.

No. Nope. Nopity nope. I'm glad I finally checked this out to know what all of the fuss is about... but no, it's just not for me. Wouldn't recommend it at all.

The Prophet by Kalil Ghibran

This book was given to me as a gift from my director in the last show that I did. I carried it with me everywhere and read it on the train, anytime I was waiting or bored. It brought me such immense comfort and inspiration. When I would read it’s pages before a long day at work, I came to work much more peaceful, than crabby. It’s messages are simple, yet profound and there is room in them to interpret them and hear them according to wherever you are in your life. I think that this book came into my life at the right time, it was a gift, then both my boyfriend and my mother highly praised it while I was reading it.

أعتقد أنها ستكون أروع شئ قرأته وسأقرأه عن الأنسانية والحب والعطاء والحكمة
كتاب رائع يستحق الاقتناء وقرائته أكثر من مرة
أبدع ثروت أباظه في ترجمته ويكأنه علي لسان عربي وليس بمترجم

أشد المقطوعات أثارت أعجابي
في المأكل والمشرب
وحين تنحر ذبيحتك ناجها في سريرتك قائلا:"إن الفدرة التي تذبحك هي نفسها... تذبحني؛وأنا مثلك مصيري الفناء.
فإن الناموس الذي أسلمك إلى يدي سوف يسلمني إلى يد أشد بأسا.
وحين تقضم التفاحة بين اسنانك،ناجها قائلا:"لسوف تحيا بذورك في جسدي، وتزهر براعم غدك في قلبي، ويصبح عبيرك أنفاسي؛ومعا نبتهج على مر الفصول".

وفي الفرح والحزن
حين يستخفك الفرح ارجع الي اعماق قلبك قتري انك في الحقيقة تفرح بما كان مصدر حزنك وحين يغمرك الحزن تأمل قلبك من جديد فستري أنك في الحقيقة تبكي مما كان يوماً مصدر بهجتك

الجريمة والعقاب
من أراد منكم أن يجلد الجاني فليمتحن سريرة المجني عليه

وفي الوداع
إن ما يبدو لأعينكم أضعف ما فيكم وأكثره اضطراباً هو في الحق أقوي ما فيكم وأشده ثباتاً

My all time favourite.

I'm not sure that this book lived up to the thousands of recomendations that I got to read it. It is very beautiful, many of the lines are great, but as a whole, it seems like a sort of ode to indecision. Maybe I didn't take enough time with it, but seemed to me to be so heavily focussed on balance and contradictions that it didn't make any extreme proclamations. Maybe balance is more real than that which is self-glorifying, but I just wasn't as moved as I wanted to be. Maybe at a different time in my life I would have soaked this up. Then again, I read this book in a car with loud music playing after recovering only half way from the flu, so I might have been biased and unnecesarily bitter and disbelieving. My reaction might also be coming off Thoreau which is beautiful to read, but also has intense philosophy behind it. I think this book is more like looking at something beautiful but not particularly deep. Philosophical porn, if you will. I bet that will offend the people that really take it seriously. Shit, that isn't my intention. I think I will take the book back to maine and re-read it there on a mountain or on the beach and think about it in that context and then maybe it will have a deeper effect...if I ever make it back to maine. I hope so.

على شاطئ تلك الجزيرة يقف النبى .. حوله أتباعه يحوّطونه برفق ، يتوسّلون إليه إلا يرحل .. ولكنه مضطـر .. يجلس ، للمرة الأخيـرة ، ليعلّمهم عن القيم والأخلاق والمعانى الإنسانية ..
يعلّمهم عن الموت والحياة .. عن الحزن والفرح .. عن الإيمان والكفـر ، عن الخيـر والشـر ..
نبىٌ لا أتخيّله إلا فى شخص ( جُبران ) .. يتلو تعاليمه وخبراته ، ويترك رسالته الأخيـرة للبشـرية ..
لغـة عذبة ، وأسلوب روحانىُّ رقيق .. كلمات من ذهب ومعانٍ سامية ..
أعجبتنى كثيـرًا المقتطفات التى تتحدث عن الجمال ، وعن الموت ..

*****
والآن كان قد حلّ المساء
فقالت المطرة العرّافة : " مباركٌ هذا اليوم ، وهذا المكان وروحك التى تكلّمت.
أجابها قائلًا : وهل كُنتُ أنا من تكلّم ؟
ألم أكن أنا أيضـا أحد السامعين ؟

مقتطفات من نبى جبران بصوت فيروز :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fQWLo...

جبران، إنسان متفرد، لغته شاعرية ومشاعره فياضة وأستاذ، بل هو قائد.

في هذا الكتاب الذي يُصنف على أنه "كتاب جبران المقدس" ويوازي فيه التوراة الوكتب المُقدسة، يتلو فيه جبران باسم شخصيته "المصطفى" تعاليمه للبشرية في مختلف مجالات الحياة، فهو يرى أن الإله يتجسد في كل شخص منا، وإن كنت شاعراً فواجب عليك أن تحرص على أن تصل رسالتك للبشر.

قرأت الكتاب مُترجم، وسيتكون لي قراءة ثانية للكتاب بلغته الأصلية، فرغم جودة الترجمة إلا أن مثل هذه الكتب من الأفضل أن تقرأ النص الأصلي واللغة الأولى التي كُتبت بها.

هذا الكتاب يصلح أن يكون دليل صغير تهتدي به في الحياة.