Rabindranath Tagore > Quotes

“Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds

“If you cry because the sun has gone out of your life, your tears will prevent you from seeing the stars.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

“You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

“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.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, Collected Poems And Plays Of Rabindranath Tagore

“Love's gift cannot be given, it waits to be accepted.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

“The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

“I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

“It is very simple to be happy, but it is very difficult to be simple.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

“I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times, in life after life, in age after age forever.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

“Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

“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.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

“Reach high, for stars lie hidden in you. Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

“Don't limit a child to your own learning, for she was born in another time.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

“Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

“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.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

“A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

“By plucking her petals you do not gather the beauty of the flower.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds

“Let your life lightly dance on the edges of
Time like dew on the tip of a leaf.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

“Love is an endless mystery, because there is no reasonable cause that could explain it.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

“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.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

“Unending Love

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times...
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,
In life after life, in age after age, forever.

Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, it's age old pain,
It's ancient tale of being apart or together.
As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,
Clad in the light of a pole-star, piercing the darkness of time.
You become an image of what is remembered forever.

You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.
At the heart of time, love of one for another.
We have played along side millions of lovers,
Shared in the same shy sweetness of meeting,
the distressful tears of farewell,
Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.

Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you
The love of all man's days both past and forever:
Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life.
The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours -
And the songs of every poet past and forever.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, Selected Poems

“The smile that flickers on a baby’s lips when he sleeps- does anyone know where it was born? Yes, there is a rumor that a young pale beam of a crescent moon touched the edge of a vanishing autumn cloud, and there the smile was first born in the dream of a dew-washed morning.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

“We live in the world when we love it.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

“Where the mind is without fear
and the head is held high,
where knowledge is free.
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls.
Where words come out from the depth of truth,
where tireless striving stretches its arms toward perfection.
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost it's way
into the dreary desert sand of dead habit.
Where the mind is led forward by thee
into ever widening thought and action.
In to that heaven of freedom, my father,
LET MY COUNTRY AWAKE!”
― Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali

“You smiled and talked to me of nothing and I felt that for this I had been waiting long.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

“We read the world wrong and say that it deceives us.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds

“I have spent many days stringing and unstringing my instrument
while the song I came to sing remains unsung.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

“Music fills the infinite between two souls”
― Rabindranath Tagore

“Those who are near me do not know that you are nearer to me than they are
Those who speak to me do not know that my heart is full with your unspoken words
Those who crowd in my path do not know that I am walking alone with you
Those who love me do not know that their love brings you to my heart”
― Rabindranath Tagore

“When the heart is hard and parched up, come upon me with a shower of mercy.

When grace is lost from life, come with a burst of song.

When tumultuous work raises its din on all sides shutting me out from beyond, come to me, my lord of silence, with thy peace and rest.

When my beggarly heart sits crouched, shut up in a corner, break open the door, my king, and come with the ceremony of a king.

When desire blinds the mind with delusion and dust, O thou holy one, thou wakeful, come with thy light and thy thunder.”
― Rabindranath Tagore