 |
|
|
|
PREFACE
An excerpt from “The Prophet” Kahlil Gibran
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and the daughters of life’s longing for itself.
They come through you, but not from you
and though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love, but not your thoughts
for they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies, but not their souls
for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you,
for life goes not backward, nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and he bends you with his might that his arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness.
For even as he loves the arrow that flies,
so he loves also the bow that is stable.
The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran
From ‘The Prophet’ by Kahlil Gibran, copyright 1923 by Kahlil Gibran
and renewed 1951 by Administrators C.T.A. of Kahlil Gibran Estate
and Mary G. Gibran. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of
Random House Inc.
|
|
|
|
|
|
