Clothes Chapter X
1923

And the weaver said, “Speak to us of Clothes.”

And he answered:

Your clothes conceal much of your beauty, yet they hide not the unbeautiful.

And though you seek in garments the freedom of privacy you may find in them a harness and a chain.

Would that you could meet the sun and the wind with more of your skin and less of your raiment,

For the breath of life is in the sunlight and the hand of life is in the wind.

Some of you say, “It is the north wind who has woven the clothes to wear.”

But shame was his loom, and the softening of the sinews was his thread.

And when his work was done he laughed in the forest.

Forget not that modesty is for a shield against the eye of the unclean.

And when the unclean shall be no more, what were modesty but a fetter and a fouling of the mind?

And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair

Khalil Gibran
Born: 6 January 1883, Bsharri, Lebanon
Nationality: Lebanese-American
Died: 10 April 1931, New York, USA

Gibran was a writer, poet, and visual artist. He was also considered to be a philosopher although he rejected the title. Best known as the author of ‘The Prophet,’ first published in 1923 and went on to become one of the all-time best-selling books. ‘The Prophet’ has been translated into over 100 languages, Gibran was born in a village of the Ottoman-ruled Mount Lebanon Mutsarrifate and emigrated to the United States with his mother and siblings in 1895. At fifteen he was sent back to Lebanon to enroll at the Collège de la Sagesse in Beirut. He returned to Bost when his youngest sister died in 1902. His mother and older half-brother died the following year