"And ever has it been known that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation"
About this Quote
Gibran lands a quiet ambush: he makes love measurable only by what it costs. The line turns separation into a kind of emotional ruler, suggesting that intimacy can feel limitless precisely because, in daily life, it goes untested. Only when a bond is threatened by distance, time, exile, death, or simple departure does its true scale snap into focus. That’s not sentimentalism so much as a hard truth about human perception: we don’t fully register what’s sustaining us until it’s removed.
The phrasing does a lot of covert work. “Ever has it been known” wraps a private ache in the authority of proverb, as if heartbreak were a form of common sense. “Love knows not” personifies love as a force with its own intelligence, yet the paradox is that love is blind to itself. Gibran implies that love isn’t just a feeling you possess; it’s a lived condition that becomes legible under pressure. “Depth” is the key metaphor: love is an ocean you only gauge when the shore recedes.
Context matters. Writing in a world shaped by migration, war, and diaspora, Gibran understood separation not as a rare tragedy but as a modern norm. The line speaks to the immigrant letter, the long-distance longing, the farewell that turns ordinary tenderness into something suddenly historic. It flatters the listener, too: your pain is evidence. Loss becomes proof of magnitude, a way to redeem absence by giving it meaning.
The phrasing does a lot of covert work. “Ever has it been known” wraps a private ache in the authority of proverb, as if heartbreak were a form of common sense. “Love knows not” personifies love as a force with its own intelligence, yet the paradox is that love is blind to itself. Gibran implies that love isn’t just a feeling you possess; it’s a lived condition that becomes legible under pressure. “Depth” is the key metaphor: love is an ocean you only gauge when the shore recedes.
Context matters. Writing in a world shaped by migration, war, and diaspora, Gibran understood separation not as a rare tragedy but as a modern norm. The line speaks to the immigrant letter, the long-distance longing, the farewell that turns ordinary tenderness into something suddenly historic. It flatters the listener, too: your pain is evidence. Loss becomes proof of magnitude, a way to redeem absence by giving it meaning.
Quote Details
| Topic | Heartbreak |
|---|---|
| Source | Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet (1923). Contains the line “And ever has it been known that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.” |
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