This book is an anthology of 153 quotes from Kahlil Gibran and 50 selected facts about Kahlil Gibran. Khalil Gibran full Arabic name is Gibran Khalil Gibran. Due to a mistake at school, he was registered as "Kahlil Gibran". Khalil Gibran was born January 6, 1883 in the town of Bsharri in the north of modern-day Lebanon, then part of Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate, Ottoman Empire. As a young man Khalil Gibran immigrated with his family to the United States, where he studied art and began his literary career, writing in both English and Arabic. As child priests visited him regularly and taught him about the Bible, as well as the Arabic and Syriac languages. The Gibrans settled in Boston's South End, at the time the second-largest Syrian-Lebanese-American communityin the United States. His mysticism is a convergence of several different influences: Christianity, Islam, Sufism, Judaism and theosophy. Gibran was influenced by the mysticism of the Sufis. In the Arab world, Gibran is regarded as a literary and political rebel. Gibran is the third best-selling poet of all time, behind Shakespeare and Laozi. “Men who do not forgive women their little faults will never enjoy their great virtues.” “I slept and I dreamed that life is all joy. I woke and I saw that life is all service. I served and I saw that service is joy.” “Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart.” “Desire is half of life, indifference is half of death.” “Love is all I can possess and no one can deprive me of it.” “One day you will ask me which is more important: my life or yours? I will say mine and you will walk away not knowing that you are my life.” “All our words are but crumbs that fall down from the feast of the mind.” “All that spirits desire, spirits attain.” “An eye for an eye, and the whole world would be blind.”

1. Kahlil Gibran: Life & Words
By Ann Kannings
First Edition
Copyright © 2014 by Ann Kannings
*****
Kahlil Gibran: Life & Words
*****
Foreword

2. “God has created several doors which open onto truth. He opens them to all those who knock
on them with the hand of faith. ”
This book is an anthology of 153 quotes from Kahlil Gibran and 50 selected facts about Kahlil
Gibran.
Khalil Gibran full Arabic name is Gibran Khalil Gibran.

3. Due to a mistake at school, he was registered as "Kahlil Gibran".
Khalil Gibran was born January 6, 1883 in the town of Bsharri in the north of modern-day
Lebanon, then part of Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate, Ottoman Empire.
As a young man Khalil Gibran immigrated with his family to the United States, where he studied
art and began his literary career, writing in both English and Arabic.
As child priests visited him regularly and taught him about the Bible, as well as the Arabic and
Syriac languages.
The Gibrans settled in Boston's South End, at the time the second-largest Syrian-Lebanese-
American communityin the United States.
His mysticism is a convergence of several different influences: Christianity, Islam, Sufism,
Judaism and theosophy.
Gibran was influenced by the mysticism of the Sufis.
In the Arab world, Gibran is regarded as a literary and political rebel.
Gibran is the third best-selling poet of all time, behind Shakespeare and Laozi.
“Men who do not forgive women their little faults will never enjoy their great virtues.”
“I slept and I dreamed that life is all joy. I woke and I saw that life is all service. I served and I
saw that service is joy.”
“Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart.”
“Desire is half of life, indifference is half of death.”
“Love is all I can possess and no one can deprive me of it.”
“One day you will ask me which is more important: my life or yours? I will say mine and you
will walk away not knowing that you are my life.”
“All our words are but crumbs that fall down from the feast of the mind.”
“All that spirits desire, spirits attain.”
“An eye for an eye, and the whole world would be blind.”
His Words
“God has created several doors which open onto truth. He opens them to all those who knock on
them with the hand of faith. ”
“Men who do not forgive women their little faults will never enjoy their great virtues.”
“I slept and I dreamed that life is all joy. I woke and I saw that life is all service. I served and I
saw that service is joy.”
“Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart.”
“Desire is half of life, indifference is half of death.”
“Love is all I can possess and no one can deprive me of it.”
“One day you will ask me which is more important: my life or yours? I will say mine and you
will walk away not knowing that you are my life.”

4. “A friend who is far away is sometimes much nearer than one who is at hand. Is not the mountain
far more awe-inspiring and more clearly visible to one passing through the valley than to those
who inhabit the mountain?”
“All our words are but crumbs that fall down from the feast of the mind.”
“All that spirits desire, spirits attain.”
“An eye for an eye, and the whole world would be blind.”
“And all knowledge is vain save when there is work, and all work is empty save when there is
love; and when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another, and to
God.”
“And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your
hair”
“And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your
course.”
“Beauty is life when life unveils her holy face. But you are life and you are the veil. Beauty is
eternity gazing at itself in a mirror. But you are eternity and you are the mirror.”
“Because the soul is like a flower that folds its petals when dark comes, and breathes not its
fragrance into the phantoms of the night.”
“But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
“But 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.”
“Do not fear the thorns in your path, for they draw only corrupt blood.”
“Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.”
“Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.”
“Exaggeration is truth that has lost its temper.”
“Extreme torture is mute, and so we sat silent, petrified, like columns of marble buried under the
sand of an earthquake. Neither wished to listen to the other because our heart-threads had become
weak and even breathing would have broken them.”
“Faith is a knowledge within the heart, beyond the reach of proof.”

5. “Faith is an oasis in the heart which will never be reached by the caravan of thinking.”
“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.”
“For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man's
hunger.”
“For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.”
“For thought is a bird of space, that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings but cannot
fly.”
“For what is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst?”
“For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun? And when the earth
shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.”
“Forgetfulness is a form of freedom.”
“Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity.”
“Generosity is not giving me that which I need that you do, but it is giving me that which you
need more that I do.”
“God listens not to your words save when He Himself utters them through your lips.”
“Half of what I say is meaningless; but I say it so that the other half may reach you.”
“He who is more mindful of one, loses the love and the faith of both.”
“He who seeks ecstasy in love should not complain of suffering.”
“How can I lose faith in the justice of life, when the dreams of those who sleep upon feathers are
not more beautiful than the dreams of those who sleep upon the earth?”
“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.”
“I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the
unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers.”
“I have never agreed with my other self wholly. The truth of the matter seems to lie between us.”
“I love you when you bow in your mosque, kneel in your temple, pray in your church. For you
and I are sons of one religion, and it is the spirit. ”

6. “I wash my hands of those who imagine chattering to be knowledge, silence to be ignorance, and
affection to be art.”
“I would not exchange the sorrows of my heart for the joys of the multitude. And I would not
have the tears that sadness makes to flow from my every part turn into laughter. I would that my
life remain a tear and a smile.”
“If the other person injures you, you may forget the injury; but if you injure him you will always
remember”
“If you cannot but weep when your soul summons you to prayer, she should spur you again and
yet again, though weeping, until you shall come laughing”
“If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. If they don't, they
never were.”
“In one drop of water are found all the secrets of all the oceans; in one aspect of You are found
all the aspects of existence.”
“In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of
little things, does the heart find its morning and is refreshed.”
“Is not the beautiful moon that inspires poets, the same moon which angers the silence of the sea
with a terrible roar?”
“It is well to give when asked, but it is better to give unasked, through understanding; and to the
open-handed the search for one who shall receive is joy greater than giving.”
“It is wrong to think that love comes from long companionship and persevering courtship. Love
is the offspring of spiritual affinity and unless that affinity is created in a moment, it will not be
created for years or even generations.”
“It takes a minute to have a crush on someone, an hour to like someone, and a day to love
someone... but it takes a lifetime to forget someone.”
“It was but yesterday I thought myself a fragment quivering without rhythm in the sphere of life.
Now I know that I am the sphere, and all life in rhythmic fragments moves within me.”
“Joy and sorrow are inseparable. . . together they come and when one sits alone with you . .
remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.”
“Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and
the greatness which does not bow before children.”
“Let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.”

7. “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. Give one another of your bread
but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be
alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your
hearts, but not into each other's keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And
stand together, yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak
tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.”
“Let your home be you mast and not your anchor.”
“Life unfolds itself in mysteries ways.”
“Life without liberty is like a body without spirit.”
“Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit.”
“Love and Doubt are not on speaking terms”
“Love descends upon our souls by the will of God and not by the demand or the plea of the
individual.”
“Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself, Love possesses not nor would it be
possessed: For love is sufficient unto love.”
“Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself. But if to love and must needs have desires, let these
be your desires: to melt and be like runnings brook that sings its melody to the night. To know
the pain of too much tenderness. To be wounded by your own understanding of love; and to bleed
willingly and joyfully. To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of
loving; to rest at noon and meditate love's ecstasy; to return home at eventide with gratitude; and
then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.”
“Love is quivering happiness.”
“Love is the only freedom in the world because it so elevates the spirit that the laws of humanity
and the phenomena of nature do not alter its course.”
“Love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation”
“Love one another, but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores
of your souls.”
“Love provided me with a tongue and tears.”
“Many of us spend our whole lives running from feeling with the mistaken belief that you can not
bear the pain. But you have already borne the pain. What you have not done is feel all you are
beyond that pain.”

8. “Modern civilization has made woman a little wiser, but it has increased her suffering because of
man's covetousness. The woman of yesterday was a happy wife, but the woman of today is a
miserable mistress. In the past she walked blindly in the light, but now she walks open-eyed in
the dark. She was beautiful in her ignorance, virtuous in her simplicity, and strong in her
weakness. Today she has become ugly in her ingenuity, superficial and heartless in her
knowledge. Will the day ever come when beauty and knowledge, ingenuity and virtue, and
weakness of body and strength of spirit will be united in a woman?”
“Much of your pain is self-chosen.”
“Much of your pain is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.”
“Music is the language of the spirit. It opens the secret of life bringing peace, abolishing strife.”
“My friend, I am not what I seem. Seeming is but a garment I wear — a care-woven garment that
protects me from thy questionings and thee from my negligence. The "I" in me, my friend, dwells
in the house of silence, and therein it shall remain for ever more, unperceived, unapproachable.”
“My loneliness was born when men praised my talkative faults and blamed my silent virtues.”
“No human relation gives one possession in another—every two souls are absolutely different. In
friendship or in love, the two side by side raise hands together to find what one cannot reach
alone.”
“Of life's two chief prizes, beauty and truth, I found the first in a loving heart and the second in a
laborer's hand.”
“One's own religion is after all a matter between oneself and one's Maker and no one else's.”
“Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.”
“Only yesterday I was no different than them, yet I was saved. I am explaining to you the way of
life of a people who say every sort of wicked thing about me because I sacrificed their friendship
to gain my own soul. I left the dark paths of their duplicity and turned my eyes toward the light
where there is salvation, truth, and justice. They have exiled me now from their society, yet I am
content. Mankind only exiles the one whose large spirit rebels against injustice and tyranny. He
who does not prefer exile to servility is not free in the true and necessary sense of freedom.”
“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with
scars.”
“Pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.”
“Remembrance is a form of meeting.”
“Sadness is but a wall between two gardens.”

9. “Safeguarding the rights of others is the most noble and beautiful end of a human being.”
“Say not, 'I have found the truth,' but rather, 'I have found a truth.' Say not, ' I have found the path
of the soul.' Say rather, 'I have met the soul walking upon my path.' For the soul walks upon all
paths. The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed. The soul unfolds itself,
like a lotus of countless petals.”
“Solitude has soft, silky hands, but with strong fingers it grasps the heart and makes it ache with
sorrow.”
“Strange, the desire for certain pleasures is a part of my pain.”
“Tell your secret to the wind, but don't blame it for telling the trees.”
“Tenderness and kindness are not signs of weakness and despair, but manifestations of strength
and resolution.”
“The appearance of things changes according to the emotions; and thus we see magic and beauty
in them, while the magic and beauty are really in ourselves.”
“The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.”
“The earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.”
“The most pitiful among men is he who turns his dreams into silver and gold.”
“The optimist sees the rose and not its thorns; the pessimist stares at the thorns, oblivious to the
rose.”
“The person you consider ignorant and insignificant is the one who came from God, that he might
learn bliss from grief and knowledge from gloom”
“The philosopher's soul dwells in his head, the poet's soul is in his heart; the singer's soul lingers
about his throat, but the soul of the dancer abides in all her body.”
“The real test of good manners is to be able to put up with bad manners pleasantly.”
“The Reality of The Other Person Lies Not In What He Reveals To You, But What He Cannot
Reveal To You.”
“The smallest act of kindness is worth more than the greatest intention.”
“The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather
leads you to the threshold of your mind.”
“The timeless in you is aware of life's timelessness. And knows that yesterday is but today's

10. memory and tomorrow is today's dream.”
“The true wealth of a nation lies not in it's gold or silver but in it's learning, wisdom and in the
uprightness of its sons.”
“There is a space between man's imagination and man's attainment that may only be traversed by
his longing.”
“They deem me mad because I will not sell my days for gold; and I deem them mad because they
think my days have a price.”
“Thus with my lips have I denounced you, while my heart, bleeding within me, called you tender
names.”
“To belittle, you have to be little.”
“To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but at
what he aspires to.”
“Trees are poems that the earth writes upon the sky.”
“Trust in dreams, for in them is the hidden gate to eternity.”
“Truth is a deep kindness that teaches us to be content in our everyday life and share with the
people the same happiness.”
“Vain are the beliefs and teachings that make man miserable, and false is the goodness that leads
him into sorrow and despair, for it is man's purpose to be happy on this earth and lead the way to
felicity and preach its gospel wherever he goes. He who does not see the kingdom of heaven in
this life will never see it in the coming life. We came not into this life by exile, but we came as
innocent creatures of God, to learn how to worship the holy and eternal spirit and seek the hidden
secrets within ourselves from the beauty of life.”
“Verily the lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul, and then walks grinning in the
funeral.”
“We are all like the bright moon, we still have our darker side.”
“We are all prisoners but some of us are in cells with windows and some without.”
“We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.”
“We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way, begin no day where we have ended another, and
no sunrise finds us where left by sunset. Even while the earth sleeps we travel. We are the seeds
of that tenacious plant, and it is in our ripeness and our fullness of heart that we are given to the
wind to be scattered.”

11. “When life does not find a singer to sing her heart she produces a philosopher to speak her mind.”
“When love beckons to you follow him, Though his ways are hard and steep. And when his
wings enfold you yield to him, Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him, Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the
north wind lays waste the garden. 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 tenderness branches that quiver in the sun, So shall he descend to your roots and shake them
in their clinging to the earth......
“When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has
given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and
you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.”
“When you love you should not say, “God is in my heart,” but rather, “I am in the heart of God.”
“When you love you should not think you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you
worthy, directs your course.”
“When you reach the end of what you should know, you will be at the beginning of what you
should sense.”
“When you were a wandering desire in the mist, I too was there, a wandering desire. Then we
sought one another, and out of our eagerness dreams were born. And dreams were time limitless,
and dreams were space without measure.”
“When you work you fulfill a part of earth's furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream was
born,
“Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it becomes too proud to weep, too grave to laugh, and too
selfish to seek other than itself.”
“Words are timeless. You should utter them or write them with knowledge of their timelessness.”
“Work is love made visible. And if you can't work with love, but only with distaste, it is better
that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of the people who
work with joy”
“Yes, there is a Nirvanah; it is leading your sheep to a green pasture, and in putting your child to
sleep, and in writing the last line of your poem”
“Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to
truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love.”
“You cannot laugh and be unkind at the same time”
“You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you

12. truly give.”
“You have been told that, even like a chain, you are as weak as your weakest link. This is but half
the truth. You are also as strong as your strongest link. To measure you by your smallest deed is
to reckon the power of ocean by the frailty of its foam. To judge you by your failures is to cast
blame upon the seasons for their inconstancy.”
“You may chain my hands, you may shackle my feet; you may even throw me into a dark prison;
but you shall not enslave my thinking, because it is free!”
“You may forget with whom you laughed, but you will never forget with whom you wept.”
“You pray in your distress and in your need; would that you might pray also in the fullness of
your joy and in your days of abundance.”
“You see but your shadow when you turn your back to the sun.”
“You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care, nor your nights without a want
and a grief, but rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked and
unbound.”
“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.”
“You were born together, and together you shall be for evermore...But let there be spaces in your
togetherness...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. Give one
another of your bread but eat not of the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let
each one of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same
music.”
“Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for
itself...
“Your clothes conceal much of your beauty, yet they hide not the unbeautiful.”
“Your daily life is your temple and your religion.”
“Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and the nights.”
“Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.”
“Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to
life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens.”
“Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding... And could you keep

13. your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous
than your joy”
“Your reason and your passion are your rudder and sails of your seafaring soul, if either your
sails or your rudder be broken; you can but toss and drift, or else be held at a standstill in mid-
seas. For reason, ruling alone is a force confining; and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns
to its own destruction.”
“Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield, upon which your reason and your judgment wage war
against your passion and your appetite.”
Facts of Life
Khalil Gibran was a Lebanese artist, poet, and writer.
Khalil Gibran full Arabic name is Gibran Khalil Gibran.
Due to a mistake at school, he was registered as "Kahlil Gibran".
Khalil Gibran was born January 6, 1883 in the town of Bsharri in the north of modern-day
Lebanon, then part of Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate, Ottoman Empire.
His mother Kamila, daughter of a priest, was thirty when he was born.
His father Khalil was his mother's third husband.
As a result of his family's poverty, Gibran received no formal schooling during his youth in
Lebanon.
As child priests visited him regularly and taught him about the Bible, as well as the Arabic and
Syriac languages.
Gibran's father initially worked in an apothecary, but with gambling debts he was unable to pay,
he went to work for a local Ottoman-appointed administrator.
Around 1891, Gibran's father was imprisoned for fraud, and his family's property was confiscated
by the authorities.
As a young man Khalil Gibran immigrated with his family to the United States, where he studied
art and began his literary career, writing in both English and Arabic.
The Gibrans settled in Boston's South End, at the time the second-largest Syrian-Lebanese-
American communityin the United States.
After the Gibrans settled in Boston, his mother began working as a seamstress peddler, selling
lace and linens that she carried from door to door.

14. Gibran started school in Boston on September 30, 1895. School officials placed him in a special
class for immigrants to learn English. Gibran also enrolled in an art school at a nearby settlement
house. Through his teachers there, he was introduced to the avant-garde Boston artist,
photographer, and publisher Fred Holland Day, who encouraged and supported Gibran in his
creative endeavors. A publisher used some of Gibran's drawings for book covers in 1898.
Gibran's mother, along with his elder brother Peter, wanted him to absorb more of his own
heritage rather than just the Western aesthetic culture he was attracted to. As result, at the age of
fifteen, Gibran returned to his homeland to study at a Maronite-run preparatory school and
higher-education institute in Beirut, called "al-Hikma" (The Wisdom). He stayed there for several
years before returning to Boston in 1902.
His sister Sultana died of tuberculosis at the age of 14
In 1903 his brother Peter died of tuberculosis and his mother died of cancer.
His sister Marianna supported Gibran and herself by working at a dressmaker's shop.
Gibran was an accomplished artist, especially in drawing and watercolor, having attended art
school in Paris from 1908 to 1910, pursuing a symbolist and romantic style over the then up-and-
coming realism.
Gibran held his first art exhibition of his drawings in 1904 in Boston, at Day's studio.
In 1904 Gibran met Mary Elizabeth Haskell, a respected headmistress ten years his senior. The
two formed an important friendship that lasted the rest of Gibran's life. The nature of their
romantic relationship remains obscure; while some biographers assert the two were lovers but
never married because Haskell's family objected, other evidence suggests that their relationship
never was physically consummated.
Elizabeth Haskell married another man, but she continued to support Gibran financially and to
use her influence to advance his career.
Elizabeth Haskell became Gibran's editor, and introduced him to Charlotte Teller, a journalist,
and Emilie Michel (Micheline), a French teacher, who accepted to pose for him as a model and
became close friends.
While in Paris (1908-1910), Gibran met his art study partner and lifelong friend Youssef
Howayek.
While most of Gibran's early writings were in Arabic, most of his work published after 1918 was
in English.
His first book for the publishing company Alfred A. Knopf, in 1918, was The Madman, a slim
volume of aphorisms and parables written in biblical cadence somewhere between poetry and
prose.

15. Gibran took part in the New York Pen League, also known as the "immigrant poets" (al-mahjar),
alongside important Lebanese-American authors such as Ameen Rihani, Elia Abu Madi and
Mikhail Naimy.
Gibran never became an American citizen; he loved his birthplace too much.
Gibran died in New York City on April 10, 1931, at the age of 48.
Before his death, Gibran expressed the wish that he be buried in Lebanon. This wish was fulfilled
in 1932, when Mary Haskell and her sister Mariana purchased the Mar Sarkis Monastery in
Lebanon, which has since become the Gibran Museum.
Written next to Gibran's grave are the words: "I am alive like you, and I am standing beside you.
Close your eyes and look around, you will see me in front of you."
Gibran willed the contents of his studio to Mary Haskell. There she discovered her letters to him
spanning twenty-three years. She initially agreed to burn them because of their intimacy, but
recognizing their historical value she saved them. She gave them, along with his letters to her
which she had also saved, to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library before she
died in 1964.
Mary Haskell Minis donated her personal collection of nearly one hundred original works of art
by Gibran to the Telfair Museum of Art in Savannah, Georgia in 1950. Haskell's gift to the
Telfair is the largest public collection of Gibran's visual art in the country, consisting of five oils
and numerous works on paper rendered in the artist's lyrical style, which reflects the influence of
symbolism.
Gibran was a great admirer of poet and writer Francis Marrash, whose works he had studied at al-
Hikma school in Beirut; Gibran's own works echo Marrash's style, many of his ideas, and at times
even the structure of some of his works.
Many of Gibran's writings deal with Christianity, especially on the topic of spiritual love.
His mysticism is a convergence of several different influences: Christianity, Islam, Sufism,
Judaism and theosophy.
Gibran's best-known work is The Prophet, a book composed of twenty-six poetic essays. Since it
was first published in 1923, The Prophet has never been out of print. Having been translated into
more than forty languages, it was one of the bestselling books of the twentieth century in the
United States.
The Gibran's poetry line "Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it so that the other half may
reach you" was used by John Lennon and placed, though in a slightly altered form, into the song
"Julia" from The Beatles' 1968 album The Beatles.
Johnny Cash recorded Gibran's "The Eye of the Prophet" as an audio cassette book.

16. Gibran was influenced by the mysticism of the Sufis.
Gibran called for the adoption of Arabic as a national language of Syria.
In the Arab world, Gibran is regarded as a literary and political rebel.
His romantic style was at the heart of a renaissance in modern Arabic literature, especially prose
poetry, breaking away from the classical school.
In Lebanon, Khalil Gibran is still celebrated as a literary hero.
The Prophet sold well despite a cool critical reception, gaining popularity in the 1930s and again
especially in the 1960s counterculture.
Gibran is the third best-selling poet of all time, behind Shakespeare and Laozi.