Values

Once a man unearthed in his field a marble statue of great beauty. And he took it to a collector who loved all beautiful things and offered it to him for sale, and the collector bought it for a large price. And they parted.

And as the man walked home with his money he thought, and he said to himself, “How much life this money means! How can anyone give all this for a dead carved stone buried and undreamed of in the earth for a thousand years?”

And now the collector was looking at his statue, and he was thinking, and he said to himself, “What beauty! What life! The dream of what a soul!—and fresh with the sweet sleep of a thousand years. How can anyone give all this for money, dead and dreamless?”

– Kahlil Gibran in his book The Forerunner

Khalil or Kahlil Gibran (1883 – 1931) was a Lebanese-American philosophical essayist, novelist, poet, painter, theologian and visual artist. He is most famous for his book The Prophet.Since it was published in 1923, The Prophet has never been out of print. The perennial classic has been translated into more than 50 languages and is a staple on international bestseller lists. It is thought to have sold tens of millions of copies. Gibran is one of the most popular writers in the world history. He was a born Christian but influenced by both Christianity and Islam.

Photograph by Mohammed al-Barami, Oman