Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Prophet
    The Prophet
    The Prophet
    Audiobook26 minutes

    The Prophet

    Written by Kahlil Gibran

    Narrated by Emma Topping

    4/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    The Prophet is a book of 26 poetic essays about Al-Mustafa who has lived in the foreign city of Orphalese for 12 years is about to board a ship which will carry him home. He is stopped by a group of people, with whom he discusses many issues of life and the human condition. It is one of the most popular set of poems of all time.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSaland Publishing
    Release dateJan 1, 2011
    ISBN9781907818752
    Author

    Kahlil Gibran

    Poet, philosopher, and artist, Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931) was born in Lebanon. The millions of Arabic-speaking peoples familiar with his writings in that language consider him the genius of his age and he was a man whose fame and influence spread far beyond the country of his birth. His poetry has been translated into more than twenty languages and his drawings and paintings have been exhibited in the great capitals of the world and compared by Auguste Rodin to the work of William Blake.

    Related to The Prophet

    Related audiobooks

    Poetry For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Ten Must-Read Crime Books Set in the American West

      Dec 27, 2019

      This list of must-read crime titles forms part of a lesser-known West, an awesomely weird landscape in which the line between Good and Evil shimmers like a mirage. The post Ten Must-Read Crime Books Set in the American West appeared first on The Mill

      4 min read

    • Article

      Roberto Benigni

      Aug 21, 2020

      Roberto Benigni
      2 min read

    • Article

      Q&A with Erin Morgenstern, author of ‘The Starless Sea’

      Nov 5, 2019

      Erin Morgenstern, bestselling author of "The Night Circus," answers questions about her latest novel, including where she finds inspiration.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Relax And Read

      May 30, 2019

      Well, the good news is, all of the above are highlighted as the benefits of reading for pleasure, as identified by research from The Reading Agency.* The bad news is, almost a third of us don’t do nearly enough of it. Nevertheless, reading remains a

      1 min read

    • Article

      Starting Over Is What’s Hard: The Millions Interviews Mary Laura Philpott

      May 15, 2019

      It’s frighteningly easy to settle into being someone you don’t want to be, because that settling can happen so gradually. The post Starting Over Is What’s Hard: The Millions Interviews Mary Laura Philpott appeared first on The Millions.

      7 min read

    • Article

      Celeste Ng, novelist

      Sep 16, 2017

      The best-selling author talks about her childhood, her fiction and the importance of, yes, dolls

      3 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Stephen Dodson

      Dec 1, 2021

      In my decade-long project to read through Russian literature chronologically, I reached 1976 and three famous novels generally considered the best their authors ever wrote. Spoiler: I loved them all. The post A Year in Reading: Stephen Dodson appeare

      4 min read

    • Article

      Seriously Joking

      Sep 25, 2022

      Sudha Rao emigrated from South India to NZ and her opening poem in this varied collection, “Warp and Weft”, speaks of her transformation as she adjusts to a new culture. Much of her adjustment relates to memory – the India of peacocks, fragrant flowe

      2 min read

    • Article

      Books Of The Month

      Jan 13, 2023

      By Meena Kandasamy A translation of the third part of the Tirukkural, one of the earliest works of Tamil poetry. As Kandasamy explains, Tamil poetry has long been sidelined within Indian culture, with the explicit content of The Book of Desire attrac

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Blue-collar Bard

      Jul 13, 2020

      The Blue-collar Bard
      13 min read

    • Article

      Contributors And Credits

      Jun 8, 2021

      KAVEH AKBAR is the author of Calling a Wolf a Wolf, the editor of The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse, and the poetry editor for The Nation. His second collection, Pilgrim Bell, will be published by Graywolf this summer. HASAN ALTAF is the managing e

      3 min read

    • Article

      Must-Read Poetry: September 2019

      Sep 5, 2019

      Eight new and notable collections you want on your nightstand this month, including work by a lost Catalan master and the latest from our new poet laureate. The post Must-Read Poetry: September 2019 appeared first on The Millions.

      7 min read

    • Article

      The Shape Of The Mountain

      Mar 15, 2018

      The Shape Of The Mountain
      3 min read

    • Article

      On Memory and Literature

      Jun 30, 2021

      Now we're all possessors of personal supercomputers that can instantly connect us to whole libraries — there can seem little sense to make iambs and trochees part of one's soul. The post On Memory and Literature appeared first on The Millions.

      18 min read

    • Article

      Interview | The Great Karachi Novel?

      Feb 8, 2019

      About 30 years ago, Salman Rushdie had argued that G.V. Desani's All About H. Hatterr was the "first genuine effort to go beyond the Englishness of the English language". Milan Kundera, Rushdie added, "once said that all modern literature descends fr

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Humanity Of Horace

      Nov 30, 2023

      IF I TOLD YOU THAT A COLLECTION OF POEMS written 2,000 years ago was sent by his wife to a man serving in the trenches of the First World War, and he replied to her that he was devoting five minutes a day amid the fighting to reading them, you might

      6 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Prophet

    4/5

    2,375 ratings67 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      This small and beautiful collection of poems is wonderful. They cover any range of topics of life such as marriage and childhood. They are a great pick you up.
    • 3/5
      Wijsheidsliteratuur op en top. Toch begrijp ik die Tagore-idolatrie niet echt goed.
    • 4/5
      I read The Prophet perhaps way way too quickly - its short enough to be read in a few hours, but deep enough to take years to digest. There's lots in there that would be good quotes to remember. It reminded me a little bit of the song 'Best of all possible worlds' in Candide(?) where this one know-it-all explains his unrelenting optimism.
    • 5/5
      What can one say? Wisdom and beauty combined.
    • 3/5
      Yes, its a good read. However, after years of reading spiritual literature of all types, the message is rather generic and strikes me now as mostly a good book for beginning spiritual seekers.
    • 3/5
      Almustafa takes his leave of a city after twelve years to sail back to the isle of his birth after, but first a seeress and the townspeople gather to hear his words of wisdom about love, marriage, children, work, religion, death, and many other subjects that encompass the human experience.Though the contents list several poem titles, this is really one long prose poem. I have a hard time understanding even simple concepts in this type of poetry - something about versifying it makes it automatically less comprehensible - but though there were nuggets of good lines here and there, mostly it seemed like mystical vagueness trying to sound profound.
    • 5/5
      Almustafa, Prophet, addresses the people of Orphalese as he prepares to leave back to his home island after a sojourn of twelve years."A keeper of silences am I."My favorite speeches are: Children, Work, Buying and Selling, Reason and Passion, Self-Knowledge, Teaching, Time, and Talking.(Unwelcome was frequent use of "pigmy," Eating and Drinking, confusing Freedom, and the kind of mean ending for Almitra...no?)Evocative illustrations were drawn by the author.
    • 4/5
      It's easy to take just a quick glance at this and think 'this person is speaking poetic nonsense in riddles' and dismiss it, =D But truly it IS quite clever. And there are lots of concepts worth ruminating on. It's short, but pretty dense, so it's a lot to take in at once. It might be a good one to read just a single small section before bed or something.
    • 2/5
      I mean...it's fine. Too bland for my taste though. I've been carting this around for almost 20 years...I probably would have enjoyed it in high school.
    • 5/5
      Originally published in 1923, the language is old world but the message is relevant even today. Worthy of multiple reads, each short chapter covers important points in life: love, work, children, joy, sorrow, etc. Another great little book whose wisdom can be incorporated into my yoga and healing classes.
    • 3/5
      There were some beautifully worded sentences and the occasional flicker of enlighten, but for the most part this little book didn't speak to me.
    • 2/5
      While reading this, it occurred to me that I would like to be drinking whatever Gibran was drinking while he wrote it. This is a book I have seen here and there, sometimes among shelves of old books in people's houses, ever since I was old enough to notice books. I don't think we had a copy in our home, but I could be mistaken. Certainly it hasn't come down into my possession as did many of my favorite books of my father's. In any case, the best word to describe "The Prophet" is drivel. Sure, it has a few nice quotes: "Let there be spaces in your togetherness" being a pretty clever one. And its assertion that live and death, pleasure and pain, etc. etc. etc. are just opposite sides of the same coin are certainly true to an extent. But the language is just pretty silly. Compared to other religious books--and I would treat this as such--it is pretty harmless, however.
    • 2/5
      I feel like I'm supposed to love this book, but it just didn't do much for me. At its best the writing is quite lyrical and there are some wonderfully quotable passages, but taken as a whole it felt like Gibran had tried to find universals among world religions and that road had just led him to rather obvious truisms.
    • 5/5
      I read this years ago. I'm not a religious person in the slightest. I might consider myself spiritual. This book was to me what I suppose the Bible or Koran, or Torah or whatever is to people of religion. It's a go-to book for learning how to be a better person. Provides insight into emotions, and ideas about work and life.
    • 4/5
      This was a surprisingly good read. The pithy statements are full of wisdom and poetic grace and the entire whole is abounded by a sense of care and compassion towards the reader. Although I am not religious, I found this to be a particularly gripping book that held my attention from start to finish.

      Great read. Recommended for poets, scholars, those with religious reasons, and curiosity-seekers.
    • 4/5
      This new edition seemed a good opportunity to take in this classic. You don't hear so much about Kahlil Gibran nowadays, but when I was in my teens he seemed to be all over the place.To be honest, I'm not sure what I think. The work captures the cadence and impression of a solid work of philosophy -- much better than the other forms I was also consuming in my teens, like Richard Bach. And I found his real world pragmatism on issues reassuring. Unlike the Christian platitudes on marriage about becoming one, Gibran urged the partners to maintain their individuality however much they are together. Similarly, parents are encouraged to allow their children to become their own persons. Parents may strive to be like their children, but they should not work to make their children like them. All true. On the other hand, I tend not to appreciate arguments of the form of clever wordplay that seek to find deep wisdom by inverting the terms. A and not-A. A chain is only as weak as the weakest link, but also as strong as the strongest one. That's ridiculous. Were I a different kind of person, or even the same person at a different, probably earlier stage of life, I may have the time and inclination to puzzle over these brief expositions on selected topics. But that's not what's going to happen. In truth, I found the new introduction to be the most memorable, with the story of how reading the right book at the right time can change one's life. That's what we really need to be reminded of.This edition introduced a new error into the text, on page 19. Publishers do not pay as much attention to copy editing as they did in the old days, sadly.
    • 5/5
      I picked up a First Edition copy at Thrift Store! The Greatest Find of My life!
    • 5/5
      Beautiful and inspiring.
    • 2/5
      The translation I read makes it seem as if Gibran were trying to condense "Thus Spake Zarathustra." I'm not sure whether this is a fault of the specific translation
    • 5/5
      Beautiful, amazing, spiritually-lifting little book that I have been flipping through for 25+ years! I highly recommend it - to everyone!!!
    • 4/5
      Amelia Grey is back home, back to where she ran from. The place her heart was taken by Devlin, and where she left it broken. Her father told her, warned her not to communicate the ghosts but she did. Now she is back and her greatest fear is all around her.

      Mariama, Devlin's dead but not gone wife and his daughter Shani still haunt him and drive Amelia away. It seems Mariama and her brother had very strong ties to an ancient sorcerery, used for evil purposes. She is tied so tight around Devin, he is weakening and the brief encounters with him are draining Amelia to a dangerous point.

      A cop has been killed. He haunts her and want her to find his killer, but he does not remember anything except a smell. Then there is something about Devlin's daughters death, he remembers something...

      An exciting chapter in the GraveYard Queen saga. This has become one of my favorite series. It's filled with thrills and chills on every page.
    • 2/5
      "Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth."

      What a great line! Little did I know it was far and away the high-point of a book that is otherwise filled with platitudes and skin-deep truths.
    • 5/5
      If you have ever questioned time, life, freedom, pain, friendship, love, marriage or pleasure I recommend this book.The lessons in this book can positively impact your life. Very simply written, this book speaks to everyone.
    • 5/5
      Humbling, inspiring, and definitely a book to keep on your bedside table...
    • 5/5
      Sometimes you read a book, sometimes a book reads you.
    • 5/5
      I feel like this is one of those essential books that everyone should read at least once in their lives. And, while it took me longer than it probably should have, I've finally read it.So much insight in Gibran's narrative, things that are timeless because they speak to the basics of human nature, which regardless of how much we "advance" as a society, will always remain true.Freedom, Time, Beauty, Crime & Punishment, Beauty, Teaching, Speaking; all concepts that the Prophet touches upon. Just do yourself a favor and pick this one up, it's definitely worth the read.This is one I'm going to keep close to me so I can reference it often.
    • 4/5
      Pretty quick read with some wise insights into human nature and our relationship with God. Some favorites:

      "Verily the lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul, and then walks grinning in the funeral."

      On search for freedom:
      "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."

      On the mystery of death and afterlife:
      "In the depths 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."
    • 5/5
      I'm not very religious, but this had some great and beautiful thoughts and advice in it.
    • 4/5
      20 years ago my sister passed away and a professor at my university handed me this book to read "On Joy and Sorrow". It stayed with me for the next 20 years until I finally tracked it down to this book. The message in "On Joy and Sorrow" is one I've tried to pass on to a friend or two when it seemed it would be helpful.

      Having just finished the whole book, there are many passages here that are as thought provoking. Just about every aspect of life is covered in this small tome, and I'd recommend it to anyone who enjoys looking at the deeper meanings in everyday life.
    • 5/5
      I just now got around to reading The Prophet. A lot of what's in here is common sense, easily recognized truths. One wishes that human beings would live by these sentiments, rather than just nodding their heads when they read them and then forgetting them in the context of real life. Some of the talk about God didn't appeal to me, although I recognize that Gibran seems to be talking about God more in the sense of a benign force in the universe rather than a being to be worshipped. Other bits flew right past me and would require rereading and further thought. And the ending bit about reincarnation--well, isn't it pretty to think so?Even though this reads like an early version of the New Age self-help books that are now ubiquitous, Gibran certainly had a gift for poetic language and simple but evocative imagery, which elevates his writing above all that other claptrap. This is a book that I can see myself returning to often. Read in 2014 for the RandomCAT Challenge.