Quotes By Rabindranath Tagore: Rabindranath Tagore, Rabi, Gurudev, Biswakabi, popularly also known as the Bard of Bengal, Tagore is best remembered for his sensitive & beautiful verse that has a magical touch to it.
He reshaped Bengali literature & music as well as Indian art with Contextual Modernism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was born on May 7, 1861.
Quotes By Rabindranath Tagore
“Love does not claim possession, but gives freedom.”
“Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.”
“If you cry because the sun has gone out of your life, your tears will prevent you from seeing the stars.”
“Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers, but to be fearless in facing them. Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain, but for the heart to conquer it.”
“You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.”
“I slept and dreamt that life was a joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was a joy.”
“It is very simple to be happy, but it is very difficult to be simple.”
“The stars are not afraid to appear like fireflies.”
“The highest education is that which does not merely give us information but makes our life in harmony with all existence.”
“Men are cruel, but Man is kind. ”
“Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark.”
“The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.”
“The small wisdom is like water in a glass: clear, transparent, pure. The great wisdom is like the water in the sea: dark, mysterious, impenetrable.”
“Reach high, for stars lie hidden in you. Dream deep, for every dream, precedes the goal.”
“Love’s gift cannot be given, it waits to be accepted.”
“Don’t limit a child to your own learning, for she was born in another time.”
“Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man.”
“I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times, in life after life, in age after age forever.”
“A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it.”
“Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.”
“The real friendship is like fluorescence, it shines better when everything has darkened.”
“You are the big drop of dew under the lotus leaf, I am the smaller one on its upper side,’ said the dewdrop to the lake.”
“Trees are the earth’s endless effort to speak to the listening heaven.”
“Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time like dew on the tip of a leaf.”
“By plucking her petals you do not gather the beauty of the flower.”
“Most people believe the mind to be a mirror, more or less accurately reflecting the world outside them, not realizing on the contrary that the mind is itself the principal element of creation.”
“You smiled and talked to me of nothing and I felt that for this I had been waiting long.”
“We read the world wrong and say that it deceives us.”
“Love is an endless mystery because there is no reasonable cause that could explain it.”
“If I can’t make it through one door, I’ll go through another door- or I’ll make a door. Something terrific will come no matter how dark the present.”
“Patriotism cannot be our final spiritual shelter; my refuge is humanity. I will not buy glass for the price of diamonds, and I will never allow patriotism to triumph over humanity as long as I live. ”
“Music fills the infinite between two souls”
“I have lost my dewdrop”, cries the flower to the morning sky that lost all its stars”
“The biggest changes in a women’s nature are brought by love; in man, by ambition”
“I have spent many days stringing and unstringing my instrument while the song I came to sing remains unsung.”
“Let my thoughts come to you, when I am gone, like the afterglow of sunset at the margin of starry silence.”
“We live in the world when we love it.”
“When you came you cried and everybody smiled with joy; when you go smile and let the world cry for you.”
“Once we dreamt that we were strangers. We wake up to find that we were dear to each other.”
“The water in a vessel is sparkling; the water in the sea is dark. The small truth has words which are clear; the great truth has great silence.”
“The roots below the earth claim no rewards for making the branches fruitful.”
“Everything comes to us that belongs to us if we create the capacity to receive it.”
“for we women are not only the deities of the household fire but the flame of the soul itself.”
“I am willing to serve my country, but my worship I reserve for Right which is far greater than my country. To worship my country as a god is to bring a curse upon it.”
“He who is too busy doing good finds no time to be good.”
“Let him only see the thorns who has eyes to see the rose.”
“Come oh come ye tea-thirsty restless ones — the kettle boils, bubbles and sings, musically.”
“Never be afraid of the moments–thus sings the voice of the everlasting.”
“Men can only think. Women have a way of understanding without thinking. The woman was created out of God’s own fancy. Man, He had to hammer into shape.”
“Someday I shall sing to thee in the sunrise of some other world, I have seen thee before in the light of the earth, in the love of man.”
“Beauty is simply reality seen with the eyes of love”
“The echo mocks her origin to prove she is the original.”
“What seems to be coming at you is really coming from you”
“Read books when you are free, read minds when you aren’t, but do read.”
“If you shut your door to all errors truth will be shut out.”
“The sparrow is sorry for the peacock at the burden of its tail.”
“The Taj Mahal rises above the banks of the river like a solitary tear suspended on the cheek of time.”
“And because I love this life, I know I shall love death as well.”
“Dreams can never be made captive.”
“I understand the voice of your stars and the silence of your trees.”
“The world loved man when he smiled. The world became afraid of him when he laughed.”
“Facts are many, but the truth is one.”
“Away from the sight of thy face my heart knows no rest nor respite, and my work becomes an endless toil in a shoreless sea of toil.”
“If no one responds to your call, then go your own way alone.”
“Let me not look for allies in life’s battlefield, But to my own strength. Let me not crave in anxious fear to be saved, But for the patience to win my freedom.”
“Neither the colorless vagueness of cosmopolitanism nor the fierce self-idolatry of nation-worship is the goal of human history.”
“The one who plants trees, knowing that he will never sit in their shade, has at least started to understand the meaning of life.”
“When I go from hence, let this be my parting word, that what I have seen is unsurpassable.”
“Perhaps the new dawn will come from this horizon, from the East where the sun rises; and then, unvanquished Man will retrace his path of conquest, despite all barriers, to win back his lost heritage. ”
“There is no day nor night, nor form nor color, and never, never a word.”
“The little flower lies in the dust. It sought the path of the butterfly.”
“Emancipation from the bondage of the soil is no freedom for the tree.”
“Pleasure is frail like a dewdrop, while it laughs it dies. But sorrow is strong and abiding. Let sorrowful love wake in your eyes.”
“he who has the knowledge has the responsibility to impart it to the students.”
“Truth in her dress finds facts too tight. In fiction, she moves with ease.”
“When you have finished with others, that is my time.”
“Purity, they imagined, was only becoming in those on whom fortune had not smiled. It is the moon which has room or stains, not the stars.”
“God may grand us gifts, but the merit of being able to take and hold them must be our own. Alas for the boons that slip through unworthy hands!”
“At the immortal touch of thy hands, my little heart loses its limits in joy and gives birth to utterance ineffable.”
“What you are you do not see, what you see is your shadow.”
“Bigotry tries to keep truth safe in its hand with a grip that kills it.”
“When old words die out on the tongue, new melodies break forth from the heart; and where the old tracks are lost, new country is revealed with its wonders.”
“The Stronger is the imagination the less imaginary it is”
“Ask me no questions, and I will tell you no lies.”
“A fancy comes to me–that desire can never attain its object–it need never attain it.”
“The world has kissed my soul with its pain, asking for its return in Songs.”
“The music of the far-away summer flutters around the Autumn seeking its former nest.”
“If my heart is breaking—let it break! That will not make the world bankrupt—nor even me; for man is so much greater than the things he loses in this life. The very ocean of tears has its other shore, else none would have ever wept.”
“Why did the flower fade? I pressed it to my heart with anxious love, that is why the flower faded.”
“If he is weak enough to grow smaller to fit himself to his covering, then it becomes a process of gradual suicide by shrinkage of the soul.”
“I cannot tell why this heart languishes in silence. It is for small needs it never asks or knows or remembers.”
“Spurious fame spreads from tongue to tongue like the fog of the early dawn before the sun rises.”
“The winds of grace are blowing all the time, but it is you that must raise your sails.”
“He who wants to do good knocks at the gate; he who loves finds the gates open.”
“Perfect gain is the best of all; but if that is impossible, then the next best gain is perfect losing.”
“I have my stars in the sky, but oh for my little lamp unlit in my house.”
“Let me think that there is one among those stars that guide my life through the dark unknown.”
“The mind, sharp but not broad, sticks at every point but does not move.”
“The spirit of rejection finds its support in the consciousness of separateness; the spirit of acceptance finds its base in the consciousness of unity.”
“If the cow alone is to be held sacred from slaughter, and not the buffalo, then that is bigotry, not religion.”