"Coming generations will learn equality from poverty, and love from woes"
About this Quote
Then he tightens the screw: “love from woes.” Not love as romance, not love as sentiment, but love as a survival skill learned in shared damage. Woes don’t ennoble automatically; they just remove the option of staying untouched. Gibran’s phrasing implies that comfort can anesthetize empathy, while pain teaches attention. It’s an argument for compassion with no illusions about how expensive the lesson is.
Context matters. Writing across the early 20th century, with the churn of industrial inequality, colonial power, mass migration, and world war, Gibran belonged to a generation watching modernity promise progress while delivering dislocation. The intent feels less like celebrating hardship than warning that societies often postpone justice until crisis makes it unavoidable. It’s a grim optimism: history educates, but it charges tuition in hunger and grief.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Gibran, Kahlil. (2026, January 15). Coming generations will learn equality from poverty, and love from woes. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/coming-generations-will-learn-equality-from-32313/
Chicago Style
Gibran, Kahlil. "Coming generations will learn equality from poverty, and love from woes." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/coming-generations-will-learn-equality-from-32313/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Coming generations will learn equality from poverty, and love from woes." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/coming-generations-will-learn-equality-from-32313/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.










