"Faith is an oasis in the heart which will never be reached by the caravan of thinking"
About this Quote
Then comes the small, sharp provocation: “the caravan of thinking.” Thinking isn’t demonized as a lone villain; it’s a whole procession, busy, social, self-assured, moving together across the desert. Caravans bring trade, maps, news, proof. They also move past what can’t be turned into cargo. By saying the caravan will “never” reach the oasis, Gibran draws a hard border between rational inquiry and inner certainty, implying that the most essential comfort is inaccessible to the very habits modernity prizes.
The subtext is a defense of the non-rational at a time when “thinking” was increasingly synonymous with progress, empire, and industrial modern life. Gibran, a Lebanese-American poet shaped by diaspora and spiritual eclecticism, speaks from a world where organized religion could feel constricting yet pure rationalism felt spiritually barren. The line flatters the reader’s inner life: you are allowed a sanctuary that arguments cannot invade. It’s also a warning: if you treat every human need as a problem to be solved, you may die of thirst while your intellect keeps marching.
Quote Details
| Topic | Faith |
|---|---|
| Source | Verified source: Sand and Foam (Kahlil Gibran, 1926)
Evidence: Faith is an oasis in the heart which will never be reached by the caravan of thinking.. This line appears as an aphorism in Kahlil Gibran’s own book Sand and Foam. The Wikisource transcription includes the front-matter statement “PUBLISHED OCTOBER 1926,” supporting 1926 as the first publication date for the work in which the quote appears. I did not locate a reliable scan/page image that shows this specific aphorism’s printed page number in the original Knopf edition within the time available; Wikisource is a transcription and typically does not preserve the original pagination for individual lines/aphorisms. Other candidates (1) Psyche's Exile: an empirical odyssey in search of the soul (Jerry Kroth, 2011) compilation95.0% ... Kahlil Gibran puts it “Faith is an oasis in the heart which will never be reached by the caravan of thinking 105”... |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Gibran, Kahlil. (2026, February 8). Faith is an oasis in the heart which will never be reached by the caravan of thinking. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/faith-is-an-oasis-in-the-heart-which-will-never-32319/
Chicago Style
Gibran, Kahlil. "Faith is an oasis in the heart which will never be reached by the caravan of thinking." FixQuotes. February 8, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/faith-is-an-oasis-in-the-heart-which-will-never-32319/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Faith is an oasis in the heart which will never be reached by the caravan of thinking." FixQuotes, 8 Feb. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/faith-is-an-oasis-in-the-heart-which-will-never-32319/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.












