Life & Wisdom Quote by Kahlil Gibran

Gibran swings a quiet blade at the transactional way we so often talk about friendship. “Let there be no purpose” is a refusal of utility: no networking, no status laundering, no “what can you do for me” disguised as intimacy. He isn’t saying friends should be aimless. He’s saying the aim shouldn’t be external. The only acceptable “profit” is interior growth, the kind that can’t be posted, quantified, or converted into influence.

The line works because it’s framed like moral legislation. “Let there be” borrows the cadence of scripture, giving the sentiment the force of a commandment while still sounding tender. Then he picks a verb with teeth: “save.” It casts everything else as a contamination of friendship, as if mixed motives don’t just dilute the bond but misname it.

Subtextually, Gibran is defending friendship as one of the few relationships that can resist the era’s social accounting. Writing in the early 20th century, between immigration, industrial modernity, and the growing bureaucratization of everyday life, he leans hard into the spiritual as a counterweight. This is Gibran’s recurring move: elevate ordinary human ties into a devotional practice.

“Deepening of the spirit” isn’t self-improvement in the modern, optimized sense. It’s depth over productivity: being known, being challenged, being softened. Friendship, for Gibran, is not a tool for life; it is part of the inner life itself.