Khalil Gibran: The Prophet (New York: Knopf, 1923)
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of life's longing for itself.
They come through you, not from you.
And though they are with you, 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 strive not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and he bends you with his might that the 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 the bow that is stable.
Formatting Questions/Improvements I'd like:
- "hanging indent" without vertical paragraph spacing, i.e., can i create a "Nospace" formatting style? (this was what I intended for <p0>))
- If so, then also a "Nospacehangingindent" formatting style
- Can columns automatically distribute lines equally?
Steven F. Freeman