Reviews

By: Amazon.com
In a distant, timeless place, a mysterious prophet walks the sands. At the moment of his departure, he wishes to offer the people gifts but possesses nothing. The people gather round, each asks a question of the heart, and the man's wisdom is his gift. It is Gibran's gift to us, as well, for Gibran's prophet is rivaled in his wisdom only by the founders of the world's great religions. On the most basic topics--marriage, children, friendship, work, pleasure--his words have a power and lucidity that in another era would surely have provoked the description "divinely inspired." Free of dogma, free of power structures and metaphysics, consider these poetic, moving aphorisms a 20th-century supplement to all sacred traditions--as millions of other readers already have. --Brian Bruya

*    *    *    *    *    *    *By: "paradise_found"
Being an Atheist, it may seem strange to some people that this book holds any meaning for me, but I think that, despite the religious references, people from all walks of life will relate to the poetic prose of The Prophet.
Kahlil Gibran has been greatly celebrated in several countries for the book's simple yet biting phrases. Any two sentences in this legacy of living can be made into a thought-altering quote.
Gibran uses a prose style throughout. Short lines of words written as freestyle poetry create a rich medium to deliver his words.
Each section has something poweful to say, but some of my favorites were those on Work, Giving, Children, Crime and Punishment, Freinds, Time, and of course Love.
As oppposed to most books containing the word "Prophet" anywhere in the title, Gibran expresses life as something to be enjoyed and soaked in as many ways as possible. The book does not stress the punishment of sins, but to bask in pleasure and not look back. Decadence is not suggested, but the basic purpose of Gibran's legacy is to tell us that life is short and must be lived without regrets.
It is a book that includes such beautiful metaphors and velvetty language that you are always sucked into reading "just one more section." What makes the book work is not just the simple genius of the author's statements, but also the beauty of his words, the flow of his language.
hate to be like everyone else (in more instances than just this), but it does change you. It states what any prophecy should, and allows the religious aspects of the beliefs to take the backseat to the love of life and aspirations.
Buy, read, and live by The Prophet's words.

*    *    *    *    *    *    *By: Earl Hazell
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.

*    *    *    *    *    *    *By: Fuad Rachkidi "F.R."
Yet his years among us were so short, Gibran managed to reveal a wisdom, a philosophy, a spirituality and a vision that will change our understanding of life itself.
The Prophet deals with life and all its aspects, a book that will take you to the deep secrets of life's heart, another dimension of seeing the human heart and the human mind, another dimension of living.
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