The Prophet
The Prophet is a book of 26 poetic essays written in English in 1923 by the Lebanese-American artist, philosopher and writer Khalil Gibran. In the book, the prophet Almustafa 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. The book is divided into chapters dealing with love, marriage, children, giving, eating and drinking, work, joy and sorrow, houses, clothes, buying and selling, crime and punishment, laws, freedom, reason and passion, pain, self-knowledge, teaching, friendship, talking, time, good and evil, prayer, pleasure, beauty, religion, and death.
Stats for nerds
26recommend
37mentions
33people
2008–2026years
78% recommend22% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Lots of scifi and fantasy.
The Works of Vermin. Exceptionally well written. Not an ounce of flab anywhere.
The Carryx series, 2 books so far. Best villains ever.
Tainted Cup and sequel. Sherlock Holmes meets Godzilla.
Goblin Emperor
The Prophet (Gibran)
Los Alamos (Kanon)
Hyperion (reread)
Finally, a shout out to the best book I read in 2025: Terra Ignota. Yes, the whole series.
- AI has made me enjoy reading more. I enjoy the opportunity to sit on the couch and embrace the slower cadence of the writing. Ive been reading Sci Fi lately but I really enjoy the story in “Napoleon A Life” (history has been something my education lacked this one is a really compelling story)
Might I suggest finding an author who you resonate with based on how the language is rings and not so much what the story tells. Poetry is good for this if you can get into it.
Or books where you can read a little thing and think about it for hours. Meditations by Marcus Arailius is a good one. The Prophet by Kahil Gibran is another good one. Ficciones By Borjes is another. These are books where a little bite can set you thinking for an hour breaking you out of the frantic flow of modern life.
- > maybe stop cutting funding for public education and start allowing more diverse perspectives?
I agree with you on that one! I am unsure about your "English academy" comment (kinda hard to read in languages you don't understand :P) but as for non-white authors, I would recommend Kahlil Gibran ("The Prophet") and (most of) Rumi's poetry.
- It is a bit more concrete and has no reference to Taoism unlike the other shared recomendations, but I also enjoyed Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet. To me it is in the spirit of the Tao. Finding the balance and harmony and not declaring dogmatic truths.
(but it is a imaginary prophet sharing wisdom, so there is maybe a association of dogmatism, but I did not perceive it like that)
- Check out The Prophet by Khalil Gibran, he uses few words to say a lot:
"Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain."
- have you read Khalil Gibran’s “The Prophet”? would recommend if you haven’t
