Luxury: The lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house as a guest, and then becomes a host, and then a master.

This line is commonly attributed to Kahlil Gibran and is typically cited as coming from his English-language prose-poetry collection *The Prophet* (1923), in the section titled “On Clothes.” In that chapter, Almustafa responds to questions about dress by widening the topic to the human relationship with comfort, vanity, and the social meanings attached to appearance. Gibran, a Lebanese-American writer and artist associated with early 20th-century spiritual and reformist currents, often warned against material attachment while still affirming beauty and dignity. The aphoristic definition of “Luxury” fits the book’s pattern of compact moral images meant for public recitation and reflection.

Gibran personifies luxury as a gradual usurper: it arrives innocently as “comfort,” is welcomed, and then quietly reverses the power relationship until it rules the household. The metaphor suggests that indulgence is rarely a sudden fall; it is incremental habituation. What begins as a reasonable desire for ease can become dependency, then domination—shaping choices, values, and even identity. The warning is not against comfort per se but against unexamined attachment and the loss of inner freedom. In the broader ethical frame of *The Prophet*, the line urges vigilance: keep material goods as servants, not masters, and preserve simplicity as a condition for spiritual autonomy.

1) “Luxury is the lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house as a guest, and then becomes a host, and then a master.”
2) “Luxury: the lust for comfort—this stealthy thing that enters the house as a guest, then becomes a host, and then a master.”