1 h 24 minAudiobook6 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · 34 pagesHardcover · 6 × 9 in · 34 pagesAbout this book
What might a farewell teach you about love, work, and the sorrow that lives beside joy?
In Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet, Almustafa waits for a ship to carry him home. He has lived in Orphalese for twelve years. Before he leaves, the townspeople gather and ask him to speak about the things that shape their lives: love, giving, work, pain, and freedom.
His replies form twenty-six short sermons in prose poetry. Rather than build an argument, Gibran offers calm, image-rich reflections on ordinary life and its largest questions. Almustafa speaks of love’s demands, the ties between joy and sorrow, and the care people owe one another. Each subject offers a place to pause and consider your own experience.
What you’ll discover
- Love with room to grow Explore Almustafa’s view of love as both a calling and a difficult path.
- Giving beyond your possessions Consider what it means to give freely and bring love into daily work.
- Joy beside sorrow Sit with the thought that laughter and tears draw from the same well.
- Judgment with human care Follow reflections on wrongdoing that refuse to treat the wrongdoer as a stranger.
- Questions without easy measures Turn toward beauty, prayer, time, and death through Almustafa’s quiet, searching reflections.
Who will love it
You will love this book if you enjoy poetry in plain words, quiet reflection, and wise sayings on family, work, friendship and the meaning of a life that you can read aloud.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Love will wound you and set you free
- Close bonds need space to breathe
- True giving means giving yourself
- Work done with love becomes visible love
- Joy and sorrow grow from one root
- See the whole cloth before you judge
- Life and death are one, and the farewell
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The Prophet
by Kahlil Gibran · 1923
Almustafa waits twelve years for his ship, and before he sails the people of Orphalese ask him how to live.
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In short
What would you ask a wise man on the day he leaves your town? In The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran gives the people of Orphalese that chance.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
Love will wound you and set you free
Gibran opens with love because it is the first question the seeress Almitra puts to Almustafa. His answer is that you must follow love even when the path is steep and its wings carry a hidden sword. Love is not a comfort to be bargained for.
He pictures love as a farmer at harvest. Love gathers you like sheaves of corn, threshes you, sifts you, grinds you and kneads you, then sends you to the sacred fire to become bread. The same love that crowns you also crucifies you. Anyone who seeks only peace and pleasure, he says, should step off the threshing floor into a world where laughter and tears are never full.
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What is The Prophet about?
It follows Almustafa, a wise man who is about to sail home after twelve years in the city of Orphalese. Before leaving, he answers the townspeople's questions on love, work, joy, pain, freedom, friendship and death in short poetic sermons.
Who is Almustafa and who is Almitra?
Almustafa is the chosen and beloved wise man, called the prophet, waiting for his ship. Almitra is a seeress who first believed in him and who asks him to leave his truth with the people before he goes.
What is the main message of The Prophet?
Life's great experiences are bound together. Love brings pain, joy and sorrow come from one source, and freedom starts within. The book urges you to love without owning, give from yourself and work with love.
The author
Kahlil Gibran
1883–1931 · Lebanese American poet and writer
Kahlil Gibran was a writer, poet, and painter born in Bsharri, in present-day Lebanon, in 1883. He moved to Boston in 1895 and settled in New York in 1911. He wrote in Arabic and English. His book The Prophet was published in 1923. He died in New York in 1931.
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