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Who really said it

Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair

Written by Kahlil Gibran 1883–1931 · Lebanese-American writer, poet & artist
Verified Free to reuse

This is the closing line of “On Clothes,” a chapter of Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet (1923), confirmed against the Project Gutenberg text of the book.

Last verified 8 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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“Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair” Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet (1923), "On Clothes"

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Provenance

The source

Work
The Prophet
Chapter
On Clothes
First published
1923, Alfred A. Knopf (New York)
Language
Written originally in English

Some of you say, ‘It is the north wind who has woven the clothes we wear.’ And I say, Ay, it was the north wind, But shame was his loom, and the softening of the sinews was his thread. And when his work was done he laughed in the forest. Forget not that modesty is for a shield against the eye of the unclean. And when the unclean shall be no more, what were modesty but a fetter and a fouling of the mind? And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair. On Clothes

The popular quote form usually drops the opening “And” and is presented as a standalone sentence; in the original it closes a longer passage on modesty and clothing.

Read “On Clothes” at Project Gutenberg

How we verified this

Public domain

The Prophet was first published in 1923, more than 95 years before 2026, so it has entered the public domain in the United States; no separate translation is involved since Gibran wrote the book directly in English.

Fact-check

Often misattributed

This line is not disputed as to authorship — it is a genuine sentence from Gibran’s own book. The only common distortion is cosmetic: the popular quote-card version almost always drops the leading conjunction and punctuation that ties it to the preceding sentence in the original.

Popular quote sites and social media

Typically render the line as a free-standing aphorism, “Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair,” omitting the opening “And” that connects it to Gibran’s preceding sentences on modesty in the original chapter ↗.

The sentence is authentically Gibran’s, from “On Clothes” in The Prophet (1923); only its usual stripped-down, standalone presentation differs from the original text, as shown in the full chapter ↗.

Context

Why it mattered

“On Clothes” is one of the twenty-six short discourses that make up The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran’s 1923 book in which the fictional prophet Almustafa answers the people of Orphalese on subjects from love to death before departing by ship. Asked to “speak to us of Clothes,” Almustafa argues that garments are as much a shield of shame and habit as they are protection, and closes the passage by urging his listeners not to let clothing sever them from direct, physical contact with the natural world.

This exact sentence closes that discourse, immediately following Gibran’s lines on modesty as “a shield against the eye of the unclean.” It is one of the most widely circulated single lines from The Prophet on social media and inspirational-quote sites, almost always presented on its own and stripped of the leading “And” that opens it in the original text.

And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.

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Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

The Prophet — full textgutenberg.org

Project Gutenberg's public-domain edition of The Prophet, containing the full "On Clothes" chapter
On Clothespoets.org

Academy of American Poets' presentation of the "On Clothes" chapter, crediting The Prophet (Knopf, 1923)
The Prophet: On Clothesmonadnock.net

An independent full-text transcription of the "On Clothes" chapter for cross-checking the exact wording
The Prophetgutenberg.org

Project Gutenberg ebook catalog entry for The Prophet, with publication and public-domain status details
Khalil Gibranen.wikiquote.org

Wikiquote's page of sourced Gibran quotations by work, for cross-referencing his other writings
Kahlil Gibranen.wikipedia.org

Biographical background on Gibran's life, dates, and literary career

The author

About Kahlil Gibran

Kahlil Gibran

1883-1931 · Lebanese-American writer, poet & visual artist

Kahlil Gibran was born in Ottoman-ruled Mount Lebanon and emigrated to Boston as a child. He is best known for The Prophet (1923), a book of twenty-six prose-poem discourses that became one of the best-selling books of the twentieth century and remains one of the most translated works in history.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

Gibran, Kahlil. The Prophet. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1923. Chapter “On Clothes.”

MLA (9th ed.)

Gibran, Kahlil. The Prophet. Alfred A. Knopf, 1923.

APA (7th ed.)

Gibran, K. (1923). The Prophet. Alfred A. Knopf.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair’?” Last verified 8 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/forget-not-that-the-earth-delights-to-feel-your-bare-feet

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