Rabindranath Tagore > Quotes

“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

“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

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

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

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

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

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

“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

“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

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

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

“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

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

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

“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

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

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

“Men are cruel, but Man is kind. ”
― Rabindranath Tagore

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

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

“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. ”
― Rabindranath Tagore

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

“The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures. It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth in numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.”
― 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

“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.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

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

“The song I came to sing
remains unsung to this day.
I have spent my days in stringing
and in unstringing my instrument.

The time has not come true,
the words have not been rightly set;
only there is the agony
of wishing in my heart . . .”
― Rabindranath Tagore

“Trees are the earth's endless effort to speak to the listening heaven.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, Fireflies

“Only Thee





That I want thee, only thee---let my heart repeat without end.
All desires that distract me, day and night,
are false and empty to the core.

As the night keeps hidden in its gloom the petition for light,
even thus in the depth of my unconsciousness rings the cry
---`I want thee, only thee'.

As the storm still seeks its end in peace
when it strikes against peace with all its might,
even thus my rebellion strikes against thy love
and still its cry is
---`I want thee, only thee'.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

“On the seashore of endless worlds children meet.

The infinite sky is motionless overhead and the restless water is boisterous. On the seashore of endless worlds the children meet with shouts and dances.

They build their houses with sand, and they play with empty shells. With withered leaves they weave their boats and smilingly float them on the vast deep. Children have their play on the seashore of worlds.

They know not how to swim, they know not how to cast nets. Pearl-fishers dive for pearls, merchants sail in their ships, while children gather pebbles and scatter them again. They seek not for hidden treasures, they know not how to cast nets.

The sea surges up with laughter, and pale gleams the smile of the sea-beach. Death-dealing waves sing meaningless ballads to the children, even like a mother while rocking her baby’s cradle. The sea plays with children, and pale gleams the smile of the sea-beach.

On the seashore of endless worlds children meet. Tempest roams in the pathless sky, ships are wrecked in the trackless water, death is abroad and children play. On the seashore of endless worlds is the great meeting of children.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali

“Age considers; youth ventures.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

“Children are living beings - more living than grown-up people who have built shells of habit around themselves. Therefore it is absolutely necessary for their mental health and development that they should not have mere schools for their lessons, but a world whose guiding spirit is personal love.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

“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.”
― 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

“Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

“The highest education is that which does not merely give us information but makes our life in harmony with all existence.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

“Give Me Strength

This is my prayer to thee, my lord---strike,
strike at the root of penury in my heart.

Give me the strength lightly to bear my joys and sorrows.

Give me the strength to make my love fruitful in service.

Give me the strength never to disown the poor or bend my knees before insolent might.

Give me the strength to raise my mind high above daily trifles.

And give me the strength to surrender my strength to thy will with love.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

“Death belongs to life as birth does
The walk is in the raising of the
foot as in the laying of it down”
― Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds

“Poems On Love

Love adorns itself;
it seeks to prove inward joy by outward beauty.

Love does not claim possession,
but gives freedom.

Love is an endless mystery,
for it has nothing else to explain it.

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

“Power said to the world,
"You are mine."
The world kept it prisoner on her throne.
Love said to the world, "I am thine."
The world gave it the freedom of her house.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds

“Let my thoughts come to you, when I am gone, like the afterglow of sunset at the margin of starry silence.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds

“I will sit in the pupil of your eyes and that will carry your sight into the heart of the things”
― Rabindranath Tagore

“The traveler has to knock at every alien door to come to his own, and one has to wander through all the outer worlds to reach the innermost shrine at the end.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

“Not hammer-strokes, but dance of the water, sings the pebbles into perfection.”
― Rabindranath Tagore