The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind.

This line is spoken by the character Almustafa in Khalil Gibran’s prose-poem cycle *The Prophet* (1923), in the chapter titled “On Teaching.” In the book’s framing narrative, Almustafa—about to depart the city of Orphalese after years of living among its people—is asked to offer final counsel on major themes of life. His remarks on teaching reflect Gibran’s broader early-20th-century spiritual humanism: a suspicion of dogma and authority, and an emphasis on inner awakening. The passage presents the teacher not as a dispenser of doctrine but as a guide who helps others discover what they already carry within themselves.

Gibran redefines wisdom as something that cannot be handed over like property. A truly “wise” teacher does not invite students into the teacher’s own mental “house” (a fixed system, creed, or personality cult). Instead, the teacher brings the learner to the “threshold” of the learner’s own mind—suggesting self-knowledge, independent judgment, and inward perception. The image implies that education is catalytic rather than transmissive: the teacher’s role is to awaken attention and confidence, not to replace the student’s thinking with borrowed conclusions. It also carries an ethical warning against intellectual dependency and the temptation to treat teachers as final authorities.

“The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind.”