Your children are not your children. They are the sons…

In The Prophet, the people of Orphalese question Almustafa before he sails home. After Almitra has asked about marriage, “a woman who held a babe against her bosom” says: “Speak to us of Children.” The answer opens with the line, then unfolds it: children “come through you but not from 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, which “dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams”. The passage ends with the image of the bow: parents are the bows from which their children “as living arrows are sent forth”, bent by the Archer so that the arrow may go swift and far.

Gibran, born in Lebanon and settled in New York, wrote the book in English; it appeared in 1923 and has sold in millions ever since.

The chapter is one of the most quoted in the book, read at christenings and pinned above cradles, a gentle warning to parents against possessiveness.

The Prophet, “On Children”, 1923

Checked word for word in the work itself.

Read the passage in the work