Hello and welcome, everyone,
to this special English lesson.
Please enable "English -- Chris" captions
to read my dialogue on your screen if you want to.
This is a reading of my selected extracts from
"The Prophet" by Kahlil Gibran.
For other English lessons, please browse my Youtube channel.
Gibran was Lebanese but emigrated to America.
This book, "The Prophet", is claimed to be the most widely read of the twentieth century.
You can read everything with me on screen using the English captions,
or for the whole book free online, please follow this link:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jrcole/gibran/prophet/prophet.htm
This is my copy of the book.
*Shows book*
Gibran wrote this work to be read by believers of any religion.
His belief was that all religions are one,
with love being the unifying principle.
The main character in the book speaks about many topics.
I have chosen my favourite passages
and am going to read them for you now.
It is one of my favourite books and I wanted to share it with you.
I love it and I hope you will too.
I have a lot to read so I'll get started now.
These are extracts from "The Prophet" by Kahlil Gibran:
On Love
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.
But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter,
and weep, but not all of your tears.
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 fulfil itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running 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.
On Giving
You give but little when you give of your possessions.
It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.
For what are your possessions but things you keep and guard for fear you may need them
tomorrow?
There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward.
And there are those who give with pain, and that pain is their baptism.
On Work
Work is love made visible.
And if you cannot 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 those who work with joy.
For if you bake bread with indifference,
you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man's hunger.
And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes,
your grudge distils a poison in the wine.
And if you sing though as angels,
and love not the singing,
you muffle man's ears to the voices of the day
and the voices of the night.
On Joy and Sorrow
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises
was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being,
the more joy you can contain.
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.
Some of you say, "Joy is greater than sorrow,"
and others say, "Nay, sorrow is the greater."
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come,
and when one sits alone with you at your board,
remember that the other is asleep on your bed.
Verily you are suspended like scales
between your sorrow and your joy.
On Freedom
Ay, in the grove of the temple and in the shadow of the citadel
I have seen the freest among you wear their freedom as a yoke and a handcuff.
And my heart bled within me;
for you can only be free when even the desire of seeking freedom
becomes a harness to you,
and when you cease to speak of freedom as a goal and a fulfillment.
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.
Verily all things move within your being in constant half embrace,
the desired and the dreaded,
the repugnant and the cherished,
the pursued and that which you would escape.
These things move within you as lights and shadows in pairs that cling.
And when the shadow fades and is no more,
the light that lingers becomes a shadow to another light.
And thus your freedom when it loses its fetters
becomes itself the fetter of a greater freedom.
On Reason & Passion
Your reason and your passion are the rudder
and the 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.
Therefore let your soul exalt your reason to the height of passion; that it may sing;
And let it direct your passion with reason,
that your passion may live through its own daily resurrection,
and like the phoenix rise above its own ashes.
On Self-Knowledge
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 know in thought.
You would touch with your fingers the naked body of your dreams.
And it is well 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.
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.
On Teaching
The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple,
among his followers, gives not of his wisdom
but rather of his faith and his lovingness.
If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of wisdom,
but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind.
On Friendship
Your friend is your needs answered.
He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.
And he is your board and your fireside.
For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.
When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the "nay" in your own mind,
nor do you withhold the "ay."
And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart;
For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires,
all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed.
When you part from your friend, you grieve not;
And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.
For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery
is not love but a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable is caught.
And let your best be for your friend.
If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also.
For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill?
Seek him always with hours to live.
For it is his to fill your need, but not your emptiness.
And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.
For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.
On Talking
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.
For thought is a bird of space,
that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly.
There are those among you who seek the talkative through fear of being alone.
The silence of aloneness reveals to their eyes their naked selves
and they would escape.
And there are those who talk,
and without knowledge or forethought reveal a truth
which they themselves do not understand.
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.
On Time
Yesterday is but today's memory and tomorrow is today's dream.
Who among you does not feel that his power to love is boundless?
And is not time even as love is, undivided and placeless?
Of Good & Evil
Of the good in you I can speak, but not of the evil.
For what is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst?
Verily when good is hungry it seeks food even in dark caves,
and when it thirsts, it drinks even of dead waters.
You are good when you are one with yourself.
Yet when you are not one with yourself you are not evil.
For a divided house is not a den of thieves; it is only a divided house.
And a ship without rudder may wander aimlessly
among perilous isles yet sink not to the bottom.
You are good when you strive to give of yourself.
Yet you are not evil when you seek gain for yourself.
You are good when you walk to your goal firmly and with bold steps.
Yet you are not evil when you go thither limping.
Even those who limp go not backward.
But you who are strong and swift,
see that you do not limp before the lame, deeming it kindness.
You are good in countless ways, and you are not evil when you are not good,
You are only loitering and sluggard.
Pity that the stags cannot teach swiftness to the turtles.
In your longing for your giant self lies your goodness:
and that longing is in all of you.
But in some of you that longing is a torrent rushing with might to the sea,
carrying the secrets of the hillsides and the songs of the forest.
And in others it is a flat stream that loses itself in angles
and bends and lingers before it reaches the shore.
But let not him who longs much say to him who longs little,
"Wherefore are you slow and halting?"
For the truly good ask not the naked, "Where is your garment?"
nor the houseless, "What has befallen your house?"
On Pleasure
Pleasure is a freedom song,
But it is not freedom.
It is the blossoming of your desires,
But it is not their fruit.
It is a depth calling unto a height,
But it is not the deep nor the high.
It is the caged taking wing,
But it is not space encompassed.
Ay, in very truth, pleasure is a freedom-song.
And I fain would have you sing it with fullness of heart;
yet I would not have you lose your hearts in the singing.
Have you not heard of the man who was
digging in the earth for roots and found a treasure?
And some of your elders remember pleasures
with regret like wrongs committed in drunkenness.
But regret is the beclouding of the mind and not its chastisement.
They should remember their pleasures with gratitude,
as they would the harvest of a summer.
Yet if it comforts them to regret, let them be comforted.
And now you ask in your heart,
"How shall we distinguish that which is good in pleasure
from that which is not good?"
Go to your fields and your gardens,
and you shall learn that it is the pleasure of the bee to gather honey of the flower,
But it is also the pleasure of the flower to yield its honey to the bee.
For to the bee a flower is a fountain of life,
And to the flower a bee is a messenger of love,
And to both, bee and flower, the giving
and the receiving of pleasure is a need and an ecstasy.
On Beauty
Beauty is not a need but an ecstasy.
It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth,
But rather a heart enflamed and a soul enchanted.
It is not the image you would see nor the song you would hear,
But rather an image you see though you close your eyes
and a song you hear though you shut your ears.
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.
On Religion
Have I spoken this day of aught else?
Is not religion all deeds and all reflection,
And that which is neither deed nor reflection,
but a wonder and a surprise ever springing in the soul,
even while the hands hew the stone or tend the loom?
Who can separate his faith from his actions, or his belief from his occupations?
He who defines his conduct by ethics imprisons his song-bird in a cage.
The freest song comes not through bars and wires.
And he to whom worshipping is a window, to open but also to shut,
has not yet visited the house of his soul whose windows are from dawn to dawn.
Your daily life is your temple and your religion.
Whenever you enter into it take with you your all.
On Death
You would know the secret of death.
But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life?
The owl whose night-bound eyes are blind
unto the day cannot unveil the mystery of light.
If you would indeed behold the spirit of death,
open your heart wide unto the body of life.
For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.
In the depth of your hopes and desires
lies your silent knowledge of the beyond;
And like seeds dreaming beneath the snow your heart dreams of spring.
Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.
Only when you drink form the river of silence shall you indeed sing.
And when you have reached the mountain top,
then you shall begin to climb.
And when the earth shall claim your limbs,
then shall you truly dance.
The Farewell
What distances can love reach that are not in that vast sphere?
What visions, what expectations and what presumptions can outsoar that flight?
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.
I only speak to you in words of that which you yourselves know in thought.
And what is word knowledge but a shadow of wordless knowledge?
Your thoughts and my words are waves from
a sealed memory that keeps records of our yesterdays.
Is it not a dream which none of you remember
having dreamt that building your city and fashioned all there is in it?
Could you but see the tides of that breath you would cease to see all else,
And if you could hear the whispering of the dream you would hear no other sound.
But you do not see, nor do you hear, and it is well.
The veil that clouds your eyes shall be lifted by the hands that wove it,
And the clay that fills your ears shall be pierced
by those fingers that kneaded it.
And you shall see
And you shall hear.
Yet you shall not deplore having known blindness, nor regret having been deaf.
For in that day you shall know the hidden purposes in all things,
And you shall bless darkness as you would bless light.
Those were my selected extracts from "The Prophet" by Kahlil Gibran.
Please share your thoughts by commenting if you wish.
Thank you for listening.
In the description on the Youtube page,
please click on "Show more" to find more resources
to learn English free on Facebook, Twitter, Skype, Tumblr
and the main website:
http://www.learnbritishenglish.co.uk/
Please check my Youtube channel for more than 100 other lessons
and subscribe for new ones coming soon.
Thank you for your time and support.
Best wishes from me, Chris, in England.
I will see you next time.