Glimpses of Bengal Quotes

“Consciously or unconsciously, I may have done many things that were un-true, but I have never uttered anything false in my poetry ⎯ that is the sanctuary where the deepest truths of my life find refuge.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, Glimpses of Bengal

“Ours is truly a God-forsaken country. Difficult, indeed, is it for us to maintain the strength of will to do. We get no help in any real sense. There is no one, within miles of us, in converse with whom we might gain an accession of vitality. No one near seems to be thinking, or feeling, or working. Not a soul has any experience of big striving, or of really and truly living. They all eat and drink, do their office work, smoke and sleep, and chatter nonsensically. When they touch upon emotion they grow sentimental, when they reason they are childish. One yearns for a full-blooded, sturdy, and capable personality; these are all so many shadows, flitting about, out of touch with the world.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, Glimpses of Bengal

“I am in my twenty-seventh year. This event keeps thrusting itself before my mind ⎯ nothing else seems to have happened of late.

But to reach twenty-seven ⎯ is that a trifling thing? ⎯ To pass the meridian of the twenties on one's progress towards thirty? ⎯ Thirty ⎯ that is to say maturity ⎯ the age at which people expect fruit rather than fresh foliage. But, alas, where is the promise of fruit? As I shake my head, it still feels brimful of luscious frivolity, with not a trace of philosophy.

Folk are beginning to complain: "Where is that which we expected of you ⎯ that in hope of which we admired the soft green of the shoot?
Are we to put up with immaturity for ever? It is high time for us to know what we shall gain from you. We want an estimate of the proportion of oil which the blindfold, mill turning, unbiased critic can squeeze out of you."

It has ceased to be possible to delude these people into waiting expectantly any longer. While I was under age they trustfully gave me credit; it is sad to disappoint them now that I am on the verge of thirty. But what am I to do? Words of wisdom will not come! I am utterly incompetent to provide things that may profit the multitude. Beyond a snatch of song, some tittle-tattle, a little merry fooling, I have been unable to advance. And as the result, those who held high hopes will turn their wrath on me; but did any one ever beg them to nurse these expectations?

Such are the thoughts which assail me since one fine Bysakh morning I awoke amidst fresh breeze and light, new leaf and flower, to find that I had stepped into my twenty-seventh year.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, Glimpses of Bengal

“yet I also yearn for a little sheltered nook; like a bird with its tiny nest for a dwelling, and the vast sky for flight.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, Glimpses of Bengal Selected from the Letters of Sir Rabindranath Tagore