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Rabindranath Tagore Quotes and Life

by Derrick
Rabindranath Tagore Quotes feature

People look for Rabindranath Tagore quotes because he was such an influential speaker and thinker. The poet, playwright, and writer was born on May 7, 1861, in Calcutta, India. He was the first non-European to be awarded to Nobel Prize in literature. Admired and respected by those who knew him, he was famously known as Master Teacher, Master Poet, and World Poet.

Tagore was a multi-faceted man, and his many achievements were not limited to writing. He was a composer, artist, and philosopher, as well. He began writing as a child, publishing his first poems by the age of 16 under the name of Bhānusiṃha

He was the youngest of thirteen children born into a well-to-do Indian family. He was educated mostly at home and developed his interest in poetry early in life.

Tagore read voraciously on many subjects. He appeared thirsty for any type of knowledge, as if the world were his personal cookie jar. He even studied law in London but found it not to his liking and returned home after a year.

While Tagore was a Renaissance man with progressive ideas, he was very much in tune with the traditional Hindu view toward marriage, which believed a woman’s purpose and salvation was to serve her husband in a relationship based on spirituality. For him, a woman’s fidelity was more critical than a man’s fidelity.

At the age of 22, Tagore married Mrinalini Devi, who was 10 years old at the time. He believed in marrying young to enable a couple to raise a large family. Such marriages were not unusual. Unfortunately, his wife and two children died in 1905.

What is Rabindranath Tagore Famous For?

By the age of thirty, Tagore was publishing his works in his own journal. He also lectured on philosophy and politics. His love of poetry and music combined seamlessly when he wrote the national anthems for Bangladesh, the Amar Shonar Bangla, and for India, Jana Gana Mana. He is known today as the “Bard of Bengal.”

Tagore took on responsibilities other than his artistic ventures. In 1890, he began managing his family estate, Shelaidaha. He collected rents from local families – sometimes in the form of dried rice. At the same time, he wrote Galpaguchchha, a collection of 84 stories romanticizing and depicting the life of the poor in Bengal.

The School at Shantiniketan

Tagore had always had a curious mind. Education and acquiring knowledge were simply a part of life for him. In 1901, he established Shantiniketan, an experimental school that was incredibly progressive for its time. Tagore himself had disliked the uninspiring teaching methods at his school and for that reason, had mostly been taught at home.

But he had a vision of what a real school could be. Shantiniketan began with five students and grew. He ensured that the setting itself was beautiful and inviting, with colorful flowers marking the grounds. He believed the mind had a deep connection with the physical world around him, and he wanted Shantiniketan to be an inspiration.

According to Tagore, a child had to become one with the natural environment around him or her. Mere book learning was depriving a child of the opportunity to grow its mind to the fullest. In his opinion, the schools that existed were producing robots instead of thinkers.

Tagore greatly emphasized imagination, mental alertness, and developing a creative way of thinking about the world. He also advocated developing the body with yoga, meditation, and sports.

While at Shantiniketan, Tagore wrote his great work, Gitanjali: Song of Offering, a book filled with 300 poems depicting man’s relationship with the divine being. This book won him the Noble Prize in Literature in 1910. Five years later, King George V awarded Tagore a knighthood.

Tagore was amassing honors far outside of India. However, the poet renounced the honor following the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh Massacre, where British soldiers fired at unarmed Indians in Amritsar and killing hundreds of innocents.

Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi

tagore and gandhi

Following the infamous massacre, Tagore found himself at odds with another Indian intellectual and freedom-loving legend, Mahatma Gandhi. Outraged at the actions of the British, Gandhi favored a rise in nationalism and uprising against Britain in a movement called the Non-Cooperation Movement. It was a popular movement, but very much opposed by Tagore.

He wrote an article titled The Cult of the Charkha. It virulently opposed nationalism, which he believed would be the ruin of India. Tagore wrote, “As is livelihood for the individual, so is politics for a particular people — a field for the exercise of their business instincts of patriotism. All this time, just as business has implied antagonism so has politics been concerned with the self-interest of a pugnacious nationalism.”

What is noteworthy that the two greatest thinkers in India could disagree but disagree with respect.

Tagore’s Travels

Just as Tagore had never been satisfied with mere book learning, he was not satisfied learning about the world from India. His travels to London and Paris began in 1878. He returned to London in 1890.

The governments of Peru and Mexico invited him for a visit, which he did in 1924. He missed Argentina but visited Italy the following year. Tagore was not a proponent of Benito Mussolini and spoke out against him. He publicly admitted that accepting Mussolini’s invitation had been a huge mistake on his part. The left-wing European press hit him hard for his comments.

Tagore had been unaware that the purpose of Mussolini’s invitation was to take advantage of his, Tagore’s, prominence and reputation for peace. The dictator wanted to hook Tagore onto his side as a public relations deal. They met twice, but their communication was limited due to language difficulties. Following the second meeting, Tagore realized he had been used as a pawn and left Italy, never to return.

When he was in his sixties, Tagore did a grand tour of Asia, which included Singapore, Bali, Siam, Java, Penang, Kuala Lumpur, Malacca, and Siam. He was almost seventy years old when he returned to London and Paris to exhibit his works of art.

Tagore visited Russia during its post-revolutionary period in 1930, but was skeptical that this new form of government, devoid in the freedom he so treasured, would work out to the benefit of its citizens.

Short Stories

Tagore began his career writing short stories, most about the poor and underprivileged living in India. These stories are a collection of how he saw the world around him. He himself was rich, and he examined those living in poverty with interest, as he always examined everything. His more famous stories are “The Fruit Seller from Kabul,” “The Runaway,” and “The Hungry Stones.” Fortunately, his stories have been translated and are still available to us.

Both new and used copies of Selected-Stories of Rabindranath-Tagore can be purchased. Also available is an exquisite deluxe hardbound edition of Greatest Works of Rabindranath Tagore. An excellent book to begin the study of Tagore’s short stories is Rabindranath Tagore’s Best Short Stories.

Tagore’s Novels

Tagore was a prolific novelist who wrote eight novels, among them The Home and the World, which has a female protagonist struggling with the rising nationalism with India. It’s the story of a progress man attempting to enlighten his wife to new, progress ideas and drives her away to the arms of his friend. This novel was turned into a movie in 1984.

In the novel “Relationships,” Tagore shows interesting and unexpected feminist leanings in his protagonist, Kumudini, a woman who finds herself trapped by the traditional female duties of pregnancy and duty to family.

Poetry

Tagore’s poems comprise some of the most haunting and passionate writings in the world. They lay bare human nature’s quest for a God they can understand in a world that can be a puzzling paradox. The poem “Recovery 14” underscores the perplexing nature of man in this world. But there is joy in Tagore’s poetry, as well. The poems “New Rain” and “Grandfather’s Holiday” deal with man’s sense of bliss in simply existing. These poems are available in the book, Selected Poems of Rabindranath Tagore.

The book Gitanjali includes his Nobel Prize-winning Song Offering.

Songs

Tagore composed over 2,000 songs. His style was influenced by Hindu music, but also has a Western element. Like his writings, these songs are meant to evoke every possible emotion. His compositions include the national anthems of India and Bangladesh, and he inspired the national anthem of Sri Lanka.

His songs are the songs of Bengal. To quote the Modern Review, “There is in Bengal no cultured home where Rabindranath’s songs are not sung or at least attempted to be sung… Even illiterate villagers sing his songs.”

His collection of Sheet Music is available, as is a CD, Kanthe-Nilem-Gaan-Rabindranath-Tagore.

Works of Art

As Tagore grew older, he began to paint. He had exhibitions of his work, including showings in London and Paris. It’s as if his thoughts could not be contained in words alone – he was compelled to create their visual equivalence, as can be seen in Tagore’s Paintings: Versification in Line.

Tagore’s Death

Rabindranath Tagore died a natural death in his beloved Bengal at the age of 80.

Rabindranath Tagore Quotes

The following Rabindranath Tagore quotes are listed in alphabetical order. This is to make adding new ones easier, easier to identify whether it already exists.

The intent with this list is to make it as “complete” as possible – adding over time when new ones are found. While we are not interested in adding every quote from every book or speech, succinct, powerful quotes are surely worth adding.

So, if you know of any Rabindranath Tagore quotes that are not listed here, please drop a comment so we can add it. Your contribution will help make this list of quotes as “complete” as possible.

A

According to the true Indian view, our consciousness of the world, merely as the sum total of things that exist, and as governed by laws, is imperfect. But it is perfect when our consciousness realizes all things as spiritually one with it, and there

Rabindranath Tagore

Age considers; youth ventures.

Rabindranath Tagore

A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it.

Rabindranath Tagore

A dewdrop is a perfect integrity that has no filial memory of its parentage.

Rabindranath Tagore

Asks the Possible of the Impossible, “Where is your dwelling-place?” “In the dreams of the Impotent,” comes the answer.

Rabindranath Tagore

And because I love this life
I know I shall love death as well.
The child cries out when
From the right breast the mother
Takes it away, in the very next moment
To Find in the left one
Its consolation.

Rabindranath Tagore

Alas, why are my nights all thus lost? Ah, why do I ever miss his sight whose breath touches my sleep?

Rabindranath Tagore

A message came from my youth of vanished days, saying, ‘I wait for you among the quivering of unborn May, where smiles ripen for tears and hours ache with songs unsung.’

It says, ‘Come to me across the worn-out track of age, through the gates of death. For dreams fade, hopes fail, the fathered fruits of the year decay, but I am the eternal truth, and you shall meet me again and again in your voyage of life from shore to shore.

Rabindranath Tagore

Ah, thou hast made my heart captive in the endless meshes of thy music, my master!

Rabindranath Tagore

Ah! How we all love to be deluded! We have a secret dread of being thought ignorant. And we end by being ignorant after all, only we have done it in a long and roundabout way.

Rabindranath Tagore

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.

Rabindranath Tagore

Alas for our foolish human nature! Its fond mistakes are persistent. The dictates of reason take a long time to assert their own sway. The surest proofs meanwhile are disbelieved. False hope is clung to with all one’s might and main, till a day comes when it has sucked the heart dry and it forcibly breaks through its bonds and departs. After that comes the misery of awakening, and then once again the longing to get back into the maze of the same mistakes.

Rabindranath Tagore

Ask me no questions, and I will tell you no lies.

Rabindranath Tagore

All my work and all my dealings with people feel very easy. Actually, everything is simple. There is one straight road – if you open your eyes you can go along it. I don’t see the need to search for all sorts of clever short cuts. Happiness and sadness are both on the road – there is no road that avoids them – but peace is found only on this road, nowhere else.

Rabindranath Tagore

At the immortal touch of thy hands my little heart loses its limits in joy and gives birth to utterance ineffable.

Rabindranath Tagore

A fancy comes to me–that desire can never attain its object–it need never attain it.

Rabindranath Tagore

Although Gora had tried his best to dissuade Anandamoyi from attending Binoy’s marriage ceremony he was not in his heart of hearts very much pained when, taking no account of his anger or distress, she refused to listen to him, in fact he really felt delighted. Feeling so certain that however great the gulf between Binoy and himself might become, Binoy could be never deprived of that part of his mother’s immeasurable love which was showered upon him like nectar, Gora’s heart was satisfied and at peace. From every other standpoint he might be separated ever so far from Binoy, but by this one bond of imperishable love of a mother these two lifelong friends would be united by the closest and deepest ties for life.

Rabindranath Tagore

At this time of my parting, wish me good luck, my friends! The sky is flushed with the dawn and my path lies beautiful. Ask not what I have with me to take there. I start on my journey with empty hands and expectant heart. I shall put on my wedding garland. Mine is not the red-brown dress of the traveller, and though there are dangers on the way I have no fear in my mind. The evening star will come out when my voyage is done and the plaintive notes of the twilight melodies be struck up from the King’s gateway.

Rabindranath Tagore

All the great utterances of man have to be judged not by the letter but by the spirit—the spirit which unfolds itself with the growth of life in history.

Rabindranath Tagore

B

Beauty is truth’s smile when she beholds her own face in a perfect mirror.

Rabindranath Tagore

Beauty is simply reality seen with the eyes of love

Rabindranath Tagore

By plucking her petals, you do not gather the beauty of the flower.

Rabindranath Tagore

Bigotry tries to keep truth safe in its hand with a grip that kills it.

Rabindranath Tagore

By all means they try to hold me secure who love me in this world.
But it is otherwise with thy love which is greater than theirs, and thout keepst me free.
Lest I forgot them they never venture to leave me alone. But day passes by after day and thou art not seen.
If I call not thee in my prayers, if I keep not thee in my heart, thy love for me still waits for my love.

Rabindranath Tagore

Because each nation has its own history of thieving and lies and broken faith, therefore there can only flourish international suspicion and jealousy, and international moral shame becomes anæmic to a degree of ludicrousness. The nation’s bagpipe of righteous indignation has so often changed its tune according to the variation of time and to the altered groupings of the alliances of diplomacy, that it can be enjoyed with amusement as the variety performance of the political music hall.

Rabindranath Tagore

But when physical appearance evades the scrutiny of our senses and enters the sanctuary of our hearts, then it can forget itself. I know, from my childhood’s experience, how devotion is beauty itself, in its inner aspect.

Rabindranath Tagore

But now, where the spirit of the Western nationalism prevails, the whole people is being taught from boyhood to foster hatreds and ambitions by all kinds of means—by the manufacture of half-truths and untruths in history, by persistent misrepresentation of other races and the culture of unfavourable sentiments towards them, by setting up memorials of events, very often false, which for the sake of humanity should be speedily forgotten, thus continually brewing evil menace towards neighbours and nations other than their own. This is poisoning the very fountainhead of humanity. It is discrediting the ideals, which were born of the lives of men who were our greatest and best. It is holding up gigantic selfishness as the one universal religion for all nations of the world.

Rabindranath Tagore

Be not ashamed, my brothers, to stand before the proud and the powerful With your white robe of simpleness. Let your crown be of humility, your freedom the freedom of the soul. Build God’s throne daily upon the ample bareness of your poverty And know that what is huge is not great and pride is not everlasting.

Rabindranath Tagore

By unrighteousness man prospers, gains what appears desirable, conquer enemies, but perishes a the root.

Rabindranath Tagore

But what is this state? It is like a morning of spring, varied in its life and beauty, yet one and entire.
All the conflicts and contradictions of life are reconciled; knowledge, love and action harmonized; pleasure and pain become one in beauty, enjoyment and renunciation equal in goodness; the breach between the finite and the infinite fills with love and overflows; every moment carries its message of the eternal; the formless appears to us in the form of the flower, of the fruit; the boundless takes us up in his arms as a father and walks by our side as a friend.
While yet we have not attained the internal harmony, and the wholeness of our being, our life remains a life of habits. The world still appears to us as a machine, to be mastered where it is useful, to be guarded against where it is dangerous, and never to be known in its full fellowship with us, alike in its physical nature and in its spiritual life and beauty.

Rabindranath Tagore

C

Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.

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

Come oh come ye tea-thirsty restless ones — the kettle boils, bubbles and sings, musically.

Rabindranath Tagore

Clouds heap upon clouds and it darkens. Ah, love, why dost thou let me wait outside at the door all alone?

In the busy moments of the noontide work I am with the crowd, but on this dark lonely day it is only for thee that I hope.

If thou showest me not thy face, if thou leavest me wholly aside, I know not how I am to pass these long, rainy hours.

I keep gazing on the far-away gloom of the sky, and my heart wanders wailing with the restless wind.

Rabindranath Tagore

Clothed in facts truth feels oppressed. In the garb of poetry it moves easy and free.

Rabindranath Tagore

CHASTITY is a wealth that comes from abundance of love. 74

Rabindranath Tagore

Chain Of Pearls

Mother, I shall weave a chain of pearls for thy neck
with my tears of sorrow.

The stars have wrought their anklets of light to deck thy feet,
but mine will hang upon thy breast.

Wealth and fame come from thee
and it is for thee to give or to withhold them.
But this my sorrow is absolutely mine own,
and when I bring it to thee as my offering
thou rewardest me with thy grace.

Rabindranath Tagore

CANNOT choose the best. The best chooses me.

Rabindranath Tagore

Clever lies become matters of self-congratulation. Solemn pledges become a farce—laughable for their very solemnity. The Nation, with all its paraphernalia of power and prosperity, its flags and pious hymns, its blasphemous prayers in the churches, and the literary mock thunders of its patriotic bragging, cannot hide the fact that the Nation is the greatest evil for the Nation, that all its precautions are against it, and any new birth of its fellow in the world is always followed in its mind by the dread of a new peril.

Rabindranath Tagore

D

Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.

Rabindranath Tagore

Depth of friendship does not depend on length of acquaintance.

Rabindranath Tagore

Don’t limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time.

Rabindranath Tagore

Do not say, ‘It is morning,’ and dismiss it with a name of yesterday. See it for the first time as a newborn child that has no name.

Rabindranath Tagore

Deliverance is not for me in renunciation. I feel the embrace of freedom in a thousand bonds of delight.

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

Dreams can never be made captive.

Rabindranath Tagore

Day by day thou art making me worthy of the simple, great gifts that thou gavest to me unasked—this sky and the light, this body and the life and the mind—saving me from perils of overmuch desire.

Rabindranath Tagore

Do not blame your food because you have no appetite.

Rabindranath Tagore

Death, thy servant, is at my door. He has crossed the unknown sea and brought thy call to my home.

The night is dark and my heart is fearful—yet I will take up the lamp, open my gates and bow to him my welcome. It is thy messenger who stands at my door.

I will worship him placing at his feet the treasure of my heart.

He will go back with his errand done, leaving a dark shadow on my morning; and in my desolate home only my forlorn self will remain as my last offering to thee.

Rabindranath Tagore

E

Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man.

Rabindranath Tagore

Everything comes to us that belongs to us if we create the capacity to receive it.

Rabindranath Tagore

Emancipation from the bondage of the soil is no freedom for the tree.

Rabindranath Tagore

Every difficulty slurred over will be a ghost to disturb your repose later on.

Rabindranath Tagore

Essentially man is not a slave either of himself or of the world; but he is a lover. His freedom and fulfilment is in love, which is another name for perfect comprehension.

Rabindranath Tagore

Early in the day it was whispered that we should sail in a boat, only thou and I, and never a soul in the world would know of this our pilgrimage to no country and to no end.

In that shoreless ocean, at thy silently listening smile my songs would swell in melodies, free as waves, free from all bondage of words.

Is the time not come yet? Are there works still to do? Lo, the evening has come down upon the shore and in the fading light the seabirds come flying to their nests.

Who knows when the chains will be off, and the boat, like the last glimmer of sunset, vanish into the night?

Rabindranath Tagore

F

Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark.

Rabindranath Tagore

Facts are many, but the truth is one.

Rabindranath Tagore

From the solemn gloom of the temple children run out to sit in the dust, God watches them play and forgets the priest.

Rabindranath Tagore

for we women are not only the deities of the household fire, but the flame of the soul itself.

Rabindranath Tagore

From my heart comes out and dances the image of my own desire. The gleaming vision flits on. I try to clasp it firmly, it eludes me and leads me astray. I seek what I cannot get, I get what I do not seek.

Rabindranath Tagore

For here rolls the sea, and even here lies the other shore waiting to be reached—yes, here is this everlasting present, not distant, not anywhere else.

Rabindranath Tagore

Freedom, sir,” I began unceremoniously, without greeting or inquiry, “freedom is the biggest thing for man. Nothing can be compared to it— nothing at all!” Surprised at my outburst, my master looked up at me in silence. “One can understand nothing from books,” I went on. “We read in the scriptures that our desires are bonds, fettering us as well as others. But such words, by themselves, are so empty. It is only when we get to the point of letting the bird out of its cage that we can realize how free the bird has set us. Whatever we cage, shackles us with desire whose bonds are stronger than those of iron chains. I tell you, sir, this is just what the world has failed to understand. They all seek to reform something outside themselves. But reform is wanted only in one’s own desires, nowhere else, nowhere else!

Rabindranath Tagore

For what are obstacles to the lower creatures are opportunities to the higher life of man.

Rabindranath Tagore

Free me as free is the forest fire, as is the thunder that laughs aloud and hurls defiance to darkness.

Rabindranath Tagore

G

Gray hairs are signs of wisdom if you hold your tongue, speak and they are but hairs, as in the young.

Rabindranath Tagore

God seeks comrades and claims love, the Devil seeksslaves and claims obedience.

Rabindranath Tagore

God waits to win back his own flowers as gifts from man’s hands.

Rabindranath Tagore

Great calm, generous detachment, selfless love, disinterested effort: these are what make for success in life. If you can find peace in yourself and can spread comfort around you, you will be happier than an empress.

Rabindranath Tagore

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!

Rabindranath Tagore

H

He who is too busy doing good finds no time to be good.

Rabindranath Tagore

He is neither manifest nor hidden, He is neither revealed nor unrevealed: there are no words to tell that which He is. He is without form, without quality, without decay.

Rabindranath Tagore

Hard Times

Music is silenced, the dark descending slowly
Has stripped unending skies of all companions.
Weariness grips your limbs and within the locked horizons
Dumbly ring the bells of hugely gathering fears.
Still, O bird, O sightless bird,
Not yet, not yet the time to furl your wings.

It’s not melodious woodlands but the leaps and falls
Of an ocean’s drowsy booming,
Not a grove bedecked with flowers but a tumult flecked with foam.
Where is the shore that stored your buds and leaves?
Where the nest and the branch’s hold?
Still, O bird, my sightless bird,
Not yet, not yet the time to furl your wings.

Stretching in front of you the night’s immensity
Hides the western hill where sleeps the distant sun;
Still with bated breath the world is counting time and swimming
Across the shoreless dark a crescent moon
Has thinly just appeared upon the dim horizon.
-But O my bird, O sightless bird,
Not yet, not yet the time to furl your wings.

From upper skies the stars with pointing fingers
Intently watch your course and death’s impatience
Lashes at you from the deeps in swirling waves;
And sad entreaties line the farthest shore
With hands outstretched and crooning ‘Come, O come!’
Still, O bird, O sightless bird,
Not yet, not yet the time to furl your wings.

All that is past: your fears and loves and hopes;
All that is lost: your words and lamentation;
No longer yours a home nor a bed composed of flowers.
For wings are all you have, and the sky’s broadening countryard,
And the dawn steeped in darkness, lacking all direction.
Dear bird, my sightless bird,
Not yet, not yet the time to furl your wings!

Rabindranath Tagore

He alone may chastise who loves.

Rabindranath Tagore

he who has the knowledge has the responsibility to impart it to the students.

Rabindranath Tagore

His love for me seemed to overflow my limits by its flood of wealth and service. But my necessity was more for giving than foe receiving; for love is a vagabond, who can make his flowers bloom in the wayside dust, better than in the crystal jars kept in the drawing-room.

Rabindranath Tagore

He who wants to do good, knocks at the gate; he who loves finds the gates open.

Rabindranath Tagore

happiness is like those stars. They don’t cover all the darkness; there are gaps between. We make mistakes in life and we misunderstand, and yet there remain gaps through which truth shines.

Rabindranath Tagore

human society is a web of mistakes; nobody has the sense to do the right thing at the right time, and when the chance is gone we break our hearts over vain longings.

Rabindranath Tagore

Hands cling to hands and eyes linger on eyes: thus begins the record of our hearts. It is the moonlit night of March; the sweet smell of henna is in the air; my flute lies on the earth neglected and your garland of flowers in unfinished. This love between you and me is simple as a song. Your veil of the saffron colour makes my eyes drunk. The jasmine wreath that you wove me thrills to my heart like praise. It is a game of giving and withholding, revealing and screening again; some smiles and some little shyness, and some sweet useless struggles. This love between you and me is simple as a song. No mystery beyond the present; no striving for the impossible; no shadow behind the charm; no groping in the depth of the dark. This love between you and me is simple as a song. We do not stray out of all words into the ever silent; we do not raise our hands to the void for things beyond hope. It is enough what we give and we get. We have not crushed the joy to the utmost to wring from it the wine of pain. This love between you and me is simple as a song.

Rabindranath Tagore

He whom I enclose with my name is weeping in this dungeon. I am ever busy building this wall all around; and as this wall goes up into the sky day by day I lose sight of my true being in its dark shadow.

I take pride in this great wall, and I plaster it with dust and sand lest a least hole should be left in this name; and for all the care I take I lose sight of my true being.

Rabindranath Tagore

Her wistful face haunts my dreams like the rain at night.

Rabindranath Tagore

I

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

Rabindranath Tagore

If you shed tears when you miss the sun, you also miss the stars.

Rabindranath Tagore

If you shut your door to all errors, truth will be shut out.

Rabindranath Tagore

If I say that He is within me, the universe is ashamed; if I say that He is without me, it is falsehood.

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

If life’s journey be endless where is its goal? The answer is, it is everywhere. We are in a palace which has no end, but which we have reached. By exploring it and extending our relationship with it we are ever making it more and more our own. The i

Rabindranath Tagore

If someone smells a flower and says he does not understand, the reply to him is: there is nothing to understand, it is only a scent. If he persists, saying: that I know, but what does it all mean? Then one has either to change the subject, or make it more abstruse by saying that the scent is the shape which the universal joy takes in the flower.

Rabindranath Tagore

If thou speakest not I will fill my heart with thy silence and endure it.
I will keep still and wait like the night with starry vigil
and its head bent low with patience.

The morning will surely come, the darkness will vanish,
and thy voice pour down in golden streams breaking through the sky.

Then thy words will take wing in songs from every one of my birds’ nests,
and thy melodies will break forth in flowers in all my forest groves.

Rabindranath Tagore

In the dualism of death and life there is a harmony. We know that the life of a soul, which is finite in its expression and infinite in its principle, must go through the portals of death in its journey to realise the infinite. It is death which is monistic, it has no life in it. But life is dualistic; it has an appearance as well as truth; and death is that appearance, that maya, which is an inseparable companion to life.

Rabindranath Tagore

In the world’s audience hall, the simple blade of grass sits on the same carpet with the sunbeams, and the stars of midnight.

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

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times, in life after life, in age after age forever.

Rabindranath Tagore

I have become my own version of an optimist. 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

I have on my table a violin string. It is free to move in any direction I like. If I twist one end, it responds; it is free.
But it is not free to sing. So I take it and fix it into my violin. I bind it and when it is bound, it is free for the first time to sing.

Rabindranath Tagore

I have had my invitation to this world’s festival, and thus my life has been blessed. My eyes have seen and my ears have heard.

It was my part at this feast to play upon my instrument, and I have done all I could.

Now, I ask, has the time come at last when I may go in and see thy face and offer thee my silent salutation?

Rabindranath Tagore

I have spent many days stringing and unstringing my instrument while the song I came to sing remains unsung.

Rabindranath Tagore

I have lost my dewdrop”, cries the flower to the morning sky that lost all its stars

Rabindranath Tagore

In Art, man reveals himself and not his objects.

Rabindranath Tagore

In our desire for eternal life we pray for an eternity of our habit and comfort, forgetting that immortality is in repeatedly transcending the definite forms of life in order to pursue the infinite truth of life.

Rabindranath Tagore

In love all the contradiction of existence merge themselves and are lost. Only in love are unity and duality not at variance. Love must be one and two at the same time. Only love is motion and rest in one. Our heart ever changes its place till it fin

Rabindranath Tagore

I’m lost in the middle of my birthday. I want my friends, their touch, with the earth’s last love. I will take life’s final offering, I will take the last human blessing.

Rabindranath Tagore

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.

Rabindranath Tagore

I am only waiting for love to give myself up at last into his hands.
That is why it is so late and why I have been guilty of such omissions.
They come with their laws and their codes to bind me fast; but I
evade them ever, for I am only waiting for love to give myself up at
last into his hands.

People blame me and call me heedless; I doubt not they are right
in their blame.

The market day is over and work is all done for the busy. Those
who came to call me in vain have gone back in anger. I am only
waiting for love to give myself up at last into his hands.

Rabindranath Tagore

It is our desires that limit the scope of our self-realization, hinder our extension of consciousness, and give rise to sin, which is the innermost barrier that keeps us apart from our God, setting up disunion and arrogance of exclusiveness. For sin

Rabindranath Tagore

It is not easy to get rid of weeds; but it is easy, by a process of neglect, to ruin your food crops and let them revert to their primitive state of wildness. […] In political civilization, the state is an abstraction and the relationship of men utilitarian. Because it has no roots in sentiments, it is so dangerously easy to handle. Half a century has been enough for you to master this machine; and there are men among you, whose fondness for it exceeds their love for the living ideals which were born with the birth of your nation and nursed in your centuries. It is like a child who in the excitement of his play imagines he likes his playthings better than his mother.

Rabindranath Tagore

It is very simple to be happy, but it is very difficult to be simple.

Rabindranath Tagore

In learning a language, when from mere words we reach the laws of words, we have gained a great deal. But if we stop at that point and concern ourselves only with the marvels of the formation of a language, seeking the hidden reason of all its apparent caprices, we do not reach that end, for grammar is not literature… When we come to literature, we find that, though it conforms to the rules of grammar, it is yet a thing of joy; it is freedom itself. The beauty of a poem is bound by strict laws, yet it transcends them. The laws are its wings. They do not keep it weighed down. They carry it to freedom. Its form is in law, but its spirit is in beauty. Law is the first step toward freedom, and beauty is the complete liberation which stands on the pedestal of law. Beauty harmonizes in itself the limit and the beyond – the law and the liberty.

Rabindranath Tagore

I AM RESTLESS

AM restless. I am athirst for far-away things.
My soul goes out in a longing to touch the skirt of the dim distance.
O Great Beyond, O the keen call of thy flute!
I forget, I ever forget, that I have no wings to fly, that I am bound in this spot evermore.

I am eager and wakeful, I am a stranger in a strange land.
Thy breath comes to me whispering an impossible hope.
Thy tongue is known to my heart as its very own.
O Far-to-seek, O the keen call of thy flute!
I forget, I ever forget, that I know not the way, that I have not the winged horse.

I am listless, I am a wanderer in my heart.
In the sunny haze of the languid hours, what vast vision of thine takes shape in the blue of the sky!
O Farthest end, O the keen call of thy flute!
I forget, I ever forget, that the gates are shut everywhere in the house where I dwell alone!

Rabindranath Tagore

I will sit in the pupil of your eyes and that will carry your sight into the heart of the things

Rabindranath Tagore

Inspiration follows aspiration.

Rabindranath Tagore

I travelled the old road every day, I took my fruits to the market,
my cattle to the meadows, I ferried my boat across the stream and
all the ways were well known to me.

One morning my basket was heavy with wares. Men were busy in
the fields, the pastures crowded with cattle; the breast of earth
heaved with the mirth of ripening rice.

Suddenly there was a tremor in the air, and the sky seemed to
kiss me on my forehead. My mind started up like the morning out of
mist.

I forgot to follow the track. I stepped a few paces from the
path, and my familiar world appeared strange to me, like a flower
I had only known in bud.

My everyday wisdom was ashamed. I went astray in the fairyland
of things. It was the best luck of my life that I lost my path that
morning, and found my eternal childhood.

Rabindranath Tagore

I thought that my voyage had come to its end at the last limit of my power, that the path before me was closed, that provisions were exhausted, and the time come to take shelter in a silent obscurity, but I find that thy will knows no end in me, and 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.

Rabindranath Tagore

I understand the voice of your stars and the silence of your trees.

Rabindranath Tagore

If one had to fill in, little by little, the gap between day and night, it would take an eternity to do it. But the sun rises and the darkness is dispelled- a moment is sufficient to overcome an infinite distance.

Rabindranath Tagore

If no one responds to your call, then go your own way alone.

Rabindranath Tagore

I came out alone on my way to my tryst. But who is this that follows me in the silent dark?

I move aside to avoid his presence but I escape him not.

He makes the dust rise from the earth with his swagger; he adds his loud voice to every word that I utter.

He is my own little self, my lord, he knows no shame; but I am ashamed to come to thy door in his company.

Rabindranath Tagore

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.

Rabindranath Tagore

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.

Rabindranath Tagore

I run as a musk-deer runs in the shadow of the forest mad with his own perfume.
The night is the night of mid-May, the breeze is the breeze of the south.
I lose my way and I wander, I seek what I cannot get, I get what I do not seek.

From my heart comes out and dances the image of my own desire. The gleaming vision flits on.
I try to clasp it firmly, it eludes me and leads me astray. I seek what I cannot get, I get what I do not seek.

Rabindranath Tagore

I have read in books that we are called ‘caged birds’. I cannot speak for others, but I had so much in this cage of mine that there was not room for it in the universe- at least that is what I then felt.

Rabindranath Tagore

I cannot tell why this heart languishes in silence. It is for small needs it never asks, or knows or remembers.

Rabindranath Tagore

I have my stars in the sky, but oh for my little lamp unlit in my house.

Rabindranath Tagore

I know that the day will come when my sight of this earth shall be lost, and life will take its leave in silence, drawing the last curtain over my eyes.

Yet stars will watch at night, and morning rise as before, and hours heave like sea waves casting up pleasures and pains.

When I think of this end of my moments, the barrier of the moments breaks and I see by the light of death thy world with its careless treasures. Rare is its lowliest seat, rare is its meanest of lives.

Things that I longed for in vain and things that I got—let them pass. Let me but truly possess the things that I ever spurned and overlooked.

Rabindranath Tagore

If only they let me, I’ll go right into the dense forest where you can’t find your way. And where the honey-sipping hummingbird rocks himself on the end of the thinnest branch, I will flower out as a champa.

Rabindranath Tagore

In your body is the garden of flowers. Take your seat on the thousand petals of the lotus, and there gaze on the Infinite Beauty.

Rabindranath Tagore

It is the pang of separation that spreads throughout the world and gives birth to shapes innumerable in the infinite sky.

It is this sorrow of separation that gazes in silence all nights from star to star and becomes lyric among rustling leaves in rainy darkness of July.

It is this overspreading pain that deepens into loves and desires, into sufferings and joy in human homes; and this it is that ever melts and flows in songs through my poet’s heart.

Rabindranath Tagore

If the day is done, if birds sing no more, if the wind has flagged tired, then draw the veil of darkness thick upon me, even as thou hast wrapt the earth with the coverlet of sleep and tenderly closed the petals of the drooping lotus at dusk. From the traveller, whose sack of provisions is empty before the voyage is ended, whose garment is torn and dustladen, whose strength is exhausted, remove shame and poverty, and renew his life like a flower under the cover of thy kindly night.

Rabindranath Tagore

I had gone a-begging from door to door in the village path, when thy golden chariot appeared in the distance like a gorgeous dream and I wondered who was this King of all kings!

My hopes rose high and methought my evil days were at an end, and I stood waiting for alms to be given unasked and for wealth scattered on all sides in the dust.

The chariot stopped where I stood. Thy glance fell on me and thou camest down with a smile. I felt that the luck of my life had come at last. Then of a sudden thou didst hold out thy right hand and say `What hast thou to give to me?’

Ah, what a kingly jest was it to open thy palm to a beggar to beg! I was confused and stood undecided, and then from my wallet I slowly took out the least little grain of corn and gave it to thee.

But how great my surprise when at the day’s end I emptied my bag on the floor to find a least little gram of gold among the poor heap. I bitterly wept and wished that I had had the heart to give thee my all.

Rabindranath Tagore

If the cow alone is to be held sacred from slaughter, and not the buffalo, then that is bigotry, not religion.

Rabindranath Tagore

I remember I once told him: ‘Women’s minds are so petty, so crooked!’ ‘Like the feet of Chinese women,’ he replied. ‘Has not the pressure of society cramped them into pettiness and crookedness? They are but pawns of the fate which gambles with them. What responsibility have they of their own?

Rabindranath Tagore

I ask for a moment’s indulgence to sit by thy side. The works
that I have in hand I will finish afterwards.

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.

Today the summer has come at my window with its sighs and murmurs; and
the bees are plying their minstrelsy at the court of the flowering grove.

A Moments Indulgence

Now it is time to sit quite, face to face with thee, and to sing
dedication of life in this silent and overflowing leisure.

Rabindranath Tagore

In the moon thou sendest thy love letters to me,” said the night to the sun.
“I leave my answers in tears upon the grass.

Rabindranath Tagore

Is there any country, sir,” pursued the history student, “where submission to Government is not due to fear?” “The freedom that exists in any country,” I replied, “may be measured by the extent of this reign of fear. Where its threat is confined to those who would hurt or plunder, there the Government may claim to have freed man from the violence of man. But if fear is to regulate how people are to dress, where they shall trade, or what they must eat, then is man’s freedom of will utterly ignored, and manhood destroyed at the root.

Rabindranath Tagore

It was always the poor grass that suffered most when two kings went to war.

Rabindranath Tagore

I was not aware of the moment when I first crossed the threshold of this life. What was the power that made me open out into this vast mystery like a bud in the forest at – midnight? When in the morning I looked upon the light I felt in a moment that I was no stranger in this world, that the inscrutable without name and form had taken me in irs arms in the form of my own mother. Even so, in death the same unknown will appear as ever known to me. And because I love this life, I know I shall love death as well. The child cries out when from the right breast the mother takes it away, in the very next moment to find in the left one its consolation.

Rabindranath Tagore

It is easy to drown yourself effortlessly into that which is truly profound and do no realise its true worth. And since the restless illusion which brings no pleasure even if you drain it to the dregs lead us by the nose and makes us dance a merry dance to its tune and we take it to be the lost desirable thing

Rabindranath Tagore

I have spent a fortune traveling to distant shores and looked at lofty mountains and boundless oceans, and yet I haven’t found time to take a few steps from my house to look at a single dew drop on a single blade of grass.

Rabindranath Tagore

I have only one prayer to offer to God, and it is that when I have been driven out of every society He will give me shelter at His own feet.

Rabindranath Tagore

In pleasure and in pain I stand not by the side of men, and thus stand by thee. I shrink to give up my life, and thus do not plunge into the great waters of life.

Rabindranath Tagore

I sit at my window this morning where the world like a passer-by stops for a moment, nods to me and goes.

Rabindranath Tagore

In one salutation to thee, my God, let all my senses spread out and touch this world at thy feet.

Like a rain-cloud of July hung low with its burden of unshed showers let all my mind bend down at thy door in one salutation to thee.

Let all my songs gather together their diverse strains into a single current and flow to a sea of silence in one salutation to thee.

Like a flock of homesick cranes flying night and day back to their mountain nests let all my life take its voyage to its eternal home in one salutation to thee

Rabindranath Tagore

I dive down into the depth of the ocean of forms, hoping to gain the perfect pearl of the formless.

No more sailing from harbour to harbour with this my weather-beaten boat. The days are long passed when my sport was to be tossed on waves.

And now I am eager to die into the deathless.

Into the audience hall by the fathomless abyss where swells up the music of toneless strings I shall take this harp of my life.

I shall tune it to the notes of forever, and when it has sobbed out its last utterance, lay down my silent harp at the feet of the silent.

Rabindranath Tagore

I have got my leave. Bid me farewell, my brothers! I bow to you all and take my departure.

Here I give back the keys of my door—and I give up all claims to my house. I only ask for last kind words from you.

We were neighbours for long, but I received more than I could give. Now the day has dawned and the lamp that lit my dark corner is out. A summons has come and I am ready for my journey.

Rabindranath Tagore

I have seen in Japan the voluntary submission of the whole people to the trimming of their minds and clipping of their freedom by their government, which through various educational agencies regulates their thoughts, manufactures their feelings, becomes suspiciously watchful when they show signs of inclining toward the spiritual, leading them through a narrow path not toward what is true but what is necessary for the complete welding of them into one uniform mass according to its own recipe. The people accept this all-pervading mental slavery with cheerfulness and pride because of their nervous desire to turn themselves into a machine of power, called the Nation, and emulate other machines in their collective worldliness.

Rabindranath Tagore

“I’ll be the cloud and you the moon.
I’ll cover you with both hands,
And our roof will be the sky.

Rabindranath Tagore

In the depth of night when no one is awake to arrest me—me, the least of all men—I will silently creep to my mother’s arms and fall asleep, and may I never wake again!

Rabindranath Tagore

It is the tears of the earth that keep her smiles in bloom.

Rabindranath Tagore

In the music of the rushing stream sounds the joyful assurance, “I shall become the sea.” It is not a vain assumption; it is true humility, for it is the truth. The river has no other alternative. On both sides of its banks it has numerous fields and forests, villages and towns; it can serve them in various ways, cleanse them and feed them, carry their produce from place to place. But it can have only partial relations with these, and however long it may linger among them it remains separate; it never can become a town or a forest. But it can and does become the sea. The lesser moving water has its affinity with the great motionless water of the ocean. It moves through the thousand objects on its onward course, and its motion finds its finality when it reaches the sea.

Rabindranath Tagore

In the deep shadows of the rainy July, with secret steps, thou walkest, silent as night, eluding all watchers.

Today the morning has closed its eyes, heedless of the insistent calls of the loud east wind, and a thick veil has been drawn over the ever-wakeful blue sky.

The woodlands have hushed their songs, and doors are all shut at every house. Thou art the solitary wayfarer in this deserted street. Oh my only friend, my best beloved, the gates are open in my house—do not pass by like a dream.

Rabindranath Tagore

I must launch out my boat. The languid hours pass by on the shore—Alas for me!

The spring has done its flowering and taken leave. And now with the burden of faded futile flowers I wait and linger.

The waves have become clamorous, and upon the bank in the shady lane the yellow leaves flutter and fall.

What emptiness do you gaze upon! Do you not feel a thrill passing through the air with the notes of the far-away song floating from the other shore?

Rabindranath Tagore

India is there to unite all human races. Because of that reason in India we have not been given the unity of races.

Rabindranath Tagore

It came to be the natural rule of life with him, that no one should add to the burden of the world, but that each should try to lighten it.

Rabindranath Tagore

I know not how thou singest, my master! I ever listen in silent amazement.

The light of thy music illumines the world. The life breath of thy music runs from sky to sky. The holy stream of thy music breaks through all stony obstacles and rushes on.

My heart longs to join in thy song, but vainly struggles for a voice. I would speak, but speech breaks not into song, and I cry out baffled. Ah, thou hast made my heart captive in the endless meshes of thy music, my master!

Rabindranath Tagore

In Indian music, it is not possible to build anything other than the raga basis. We can run away from its fetters, but not from its main outline.

Rabindranath Tagore

I leave no trace of wings in the air, but I am glad that I had my flight

Rabindranath Tagore

I boasted among men that I had known you. They see your pictures in all works of mine. They come and ask me, Who is he?’ I know not how to answer them. I say, Indeed, I cannot tell.’ They blame me and they go away in scorn. And you sit there smiling.

I put my tales of you into lasting songs. The secret gushes out from my heart. They come and ask me, Tell me all your meanings.’ I know not how to answer them. I say, Ah, who knows what they mean!’ They smile and go away in utter scorn. And you sit there smiling.

Rabindranath Tagore

I will deck thee with trophies, garlands of my defeat. It is never in my power to escape unconquered.

I surely know my pride will go to the wall, my life will burst its bonds in exceeding pain, and my empty heart will sob out in music like a hollow reed, and the stone will melt in tears.

I surely know the hundred petals of a lotus will not remain closed for ever and the secret recess of its honey will be bared.

From the blue sky an eye shall gaze upon me and summon me in silence. Nothing will be left for me, nothing whatever, and utter death shall I receive at thy feet.

Rabindranath Tagore

I do not for a moment suggest that Japan should be unmindful of acquiring modern weapons of self-protection. But this should never be allowed to go beyond her instinct of self-preservation. She must know that the real power is not in the weapons themselves, but in the man who wields those weapons

Rabindranath Tagore

L

Like the meeting of the seagulls and the waves we meet and come near. The seagulls fly off, the waves roll away and we depart.

Rabindranath Tagore

Love’s overbrimming mystery joins death and life. It has filled my cup of pain with joy.

Rabindranath Tagore

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

Rabindranath Tagore

Let us not pray to be sheltered from dangers but to be fearless when facing them.

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

Let my thoughts come to you, when I am gone, like the afterglow of sunset at the margin of starry silence.

Rabindranath Tagore

Let the dead have the immortality of fame, but the living the immortality of love.

Rabindranath Tagore

Let me light my lamp”, says the star, “And never debate if it will help to remove the darkness

Rabindranath Tagore

Let me think that there is one among those stars that guides my life through the dark unknown.

Rabindranath Tagore

Life is given to us, we earn it by giving it.

Rabindranath Tagore

Life’s errors cry for the merciful beauty that can modulate their isolation into a harmony with the whole.

Rabindranath Tagore

Life, like a child, laughs,
shaking its rattle of death as it runs.

Rabindranath Tagore

Love is the only reality and it is not a mere sentiment. It is the ultimate truth that lies at the heart of creation.

Rabindranath Tagore

Love does not claim possession, but gives freedom.

Rabindranath Tagore

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

Rabindranath Tagore

Love is an endless mystery, because there is no reasonable cause that could explain it.

Rabindranath Tagore

Love is not a mere impulse, it must contain truth, which is law.

Rabindranath Tagore

Love gives beauty to everything it touches. Not greed and utility; they produce offices, but not dwelling houses. To be able to love material things, to clothe them with tender grace, and yet not be attached to them, this is a great service. Providen

Rabindranath Tagore

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

Rabindranath Tagore

Let me light my lamp”, says the star, “And never debate if it will help to remove the darkness

Rabindranath Tagore

Let him only see the thorns who has eyes to see the rose.

Rabindranath Tagore

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.

Rabindranath Tagore

Let only that little be left of me whereby I may name thee my all.
Let only that little be left of my will whereby I may feel thee on every side, and come to thee in everything, and offer to thee my love every moment. Let only that little be left of me whereby I may never hide thee.
Let only that little of my fetters be left whereby I am bound with thy will, and thy purpose is carried out in my life–and that is the fetter of thy love.

Rabindranath Tagore

Leave out my name from the gift if it be a burden, but keep my song.

Rabindranath Tagore

Love’s gift cannot be given, it waits to be accepted.

Rabindranath Tagore

Light, my light, the world-filling light, the eye-kissing light, heart-sweetening light!

Ah, the light dances, my darling, at the centre of my life; the light strikes, my darling, the chords of my love; the sky opens, the wind runs wild, laughter passes over the earth.

The butterflies spread their sails on the sea of light. Lilies and jasmines surge up on the crest of the waves of light.

The light is shattered into gold on every cloud, my darling, and it scatters gems in profusion.

Mirth spreads from leaf to leaf, my darling, and gladness without measure. The heaven’s river has drowned its banks and the flood of joy is abroad.

Rabindranath Tagore

Leave this chanting and singing and telling of beads! Whom dost thou worship in this lonely dark corner of a temple with doors all shut? Open thine eyes and see thy God is not before thee!

He is there where the tiller is tilling the hard ground and where the pathmaker is breaking stones. He is with them in sun and in shower, and his garment is covered with dust. Put of thy holy mantle and even like him come down on the dusty soil!

Deliverance? Where is this deliverance to be found? Our master himself has joyfully taken upon him the bonds of creation; he is bound with us all for ever.

Come out of thy meditations and leave aside thy flowers and incense! What harm is there if thy clothes become tattered and stained? Meet him and stand by him in toil and in sweat of thy brow

Rabindranath Tagore

Let your love see me even through the barrier of nearness.

Rabindranath Tagore

Let my love, like sunlight, surround you and yet give you illumined freedom.

Rabindranath Tagore

Life has become richer by the love that has been lost.

Rabindranath Tagore

Life of my life, I shall ever try to keep my body pure, knowing that thy living touch is upon all my limbs.

I shall ever try to keep all untruths out from my thoughts, knowing that thou art that truth which has kindled the light of reason in my mind.

I shall ever try to drive all evils away from my heart and keep my love in flower, knowing that thou hast thy seat in the inmost shrine of my heart.

And it shall be my endeavour to reveal thee in my actions, knowing it is thy power gives me strength to act.

Rabindranath Tagore

M

Music fills the infinite between two souls.

Rabindranath Tagore

Man’s cry is to reach his fullest expression.

Rabindranath Tagore

Man’s abiding happiness is not in getting anything but in giving himself up to what is greater than himself, to ideas which are larger than his individual life, the idea of his country, of humanity, of God.

Rabindranath Tagore

Men are cruel, but Man is kind.

Rabindranath Tagore

Men can only think. Women have a way of understanding without thinking. Woman was created out of God’s own fancy. Man, He had to hammer into shape.

Rabindranath Tagore

Mistakes live in the neighborhood of truth and therefore delude us.

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

My dearest life, I know you are not mine forever; but do love me even if it’s for this moment. After that I shall vanish into the forest where you cast me, I won’t ask anyone for anything again. Give me something that can last me till I die.

Rabindranath Tagore

My day is done, and I am like a boat drawn on the beach, listening to the dance-music of the tide in the evening.

Rabindranath Tagore

My heart, the bird of the wilderness,
has found its sky in your eyes.
They are the cradle of the morning,
they are the kingdom of the stars.
My songs are lost in their depths.
Let me but soar in that sky,
in its lonely immensity.
Let me but cleave its clouds
and spread wings in its sunshine.

Rabindranath Tagore

My Friend:

Art thou abroad on this stormy night
on thy journey of love, my friend?
The sky groans like one in despair.

I have no sleep tonight.
Ever and again I open my door and look out on
the darkness, my friend!

I can see nothing before me.
I wonder where lies thy path!

By what dim shore of the ink-black river,
by what far edge of the frowning forest,
through what mazy depth of gloom art thou threading
thy course to come to me, my friend?

Rabindranath Tagore

My husband used to say, that man and wife are equal in love because of their equal claim on each other. I never argued the point with him, but my heart said that devotion never stands in the way of true equality; it only raises the level of ground meeting. Therefore the joy of the higher equality remains permanent; it never slides down to the vulgar level of triviality.

Rabindranath Tagore

Man is not to fight with other human races, other human individuals, but his work is to bring about reconciliation and Peace and to restore the bonds of friendship and love. We are not like fighting beasts. It is the life of self which is predominating in our life, the self which is creating the seclusion, giving rise to sufferings, to jealousy and hatred, to political and commercial competition. All these illusions will vanish, if we go down to the heart of

Rabindranath Tagore

Man goes into the noisy crowd to drown his own clamour of silence.

Rabindranath Tagore

Many an hour I have spent in the strife of the good and the evil, but now it is the pleasure of my playmate of the empty days to draw my heart on to him;

Rabindranath Tagore

MAIDEN, your simplicity, like the blueness of the lake, reveals your depth of truth.

Rabindranath Tagore

Man can destroy and plunder, earn and accumulate, invent and discover, but he is great because his soul comprehends all.

Rabindranath Tagore

N

Nirvana is not the blowing out of the candle. It is the extinguishing of the flame because day is come.

Rabindranath Tagore

Night’s darkness is the bag that bursts with the gold of the dawn.

Rabindranath Tagore

No civilized society can thrive upon victims, whose humanity has been permanently mutilated.

Rabindranath Tagore

Not hammer-strokes, but dance of the water, sings the pebbles into perfection.

Rabindranath Tagore

Never be afraid of the moments–thus sings the voice of the everlasting.

Rabindranath Tagore

Neither the colourless vagueness of cosmopolitanism, nor the fierce self-idolatry of nation-worship, is the goal of human history.

Rabindranath Tagore

nationalism is a cruel epidemic of evil that is sweeping over the human world of the present age,

Rabindranath Tagore

O

Objects of knowledge maintain an infinite distance from us who are the knowers. For knowledge is not union. Therefore the further world of freedom awaits us there where we reach truth, not through feeling it by senses or knowing it by reason, but thr

Rabindranath Tagore

Our creation is the modification of relationship.

Rabindranath Tagore

Our nature is obscured by work done by the compulsion of want or fear. The mother reveals herself in the service of her children, so our true freedom is not the freedom from action but freedom in action, which can only be attained in the work of love.

Rabindranath Tagore

Obstacles are necessary companions to expression, and we know that the positive element in language is not in its obstructiveness. Exclusively viewed from the side of the obstacle, nature appears inimical to the idea of morality. But if that were abs

Rabindranath Tagore

Obstinate are the trammels, but my heart aches when I try to break them. Freedom is all I want, but to hope for it I feel ashamed. I am certain that priceless wealth is in thee, and that thou art my best friend, but I have not the heart to sweep away the tinsel that fills my room.

The shroud that covers me is a shroud of dust and death; I hate it, yet hug it in love. My debts are large, my failures great, my shame secret and heavy; yet when I come to ask for my good, I quake in fear lest my prayer be granted.

Rabindranath Tagore

Once we dreamt that we were strangers. We wake up to find that we were dear to each other.

Rabindranath Tagore

Only in love are unity and duality not in conflict.

Rabindranath Tagore

Oh my only friend, my best beloved, the gates are open in my house — do not pass by like a dream.

Rabindranath Tagore

Only when waves fall on the shore do they make a harmonious sound;

Only when breezes shake the woods do we hear a rustling in the leaves.

Only from a marriage of two forces does music arise in the world.

Where the is no love, where listeners are dumb, there can never be song.

Rabindranath Tagore

One clings desperately to some vain hope, till a day comes when it has sucked the heart dry and then it breaks through its bonds and departs. After that comes the misery of awakening, and then once again the longing to get back into the maze of the same mistakes.

Rabindranath Tagore

Once again I draw your attention to the difficulties India has had to encounter and her struggle to overcome them. Her problem was the problem of the world in miniature. India is too vast in its area and too diverse in its races. It is many countries packed in one geographical receptacle. It is just the opposite of what Europe truly is, namely, one country made into many. Thus Europe in its culture and growth has had the advantage of the strength of the many as well as the strength of the one. India, on the contrary, being naturally many, yet adventitiously one, has all along suffered from the looseness of its diversity and the feebleness of its unity. A true unity is like a round globe, it rolls on, carrying its burden easily; but diversity is a many-cornered thing which has to be dragged and pushed with all force. Be it said to the credit of India that this diversity was not her own creation; she has had to accept it as a fact from the beginning of her history. In America and Australia, Europe has simplified her problem by almost exterminating the original population. Even in the present age this spirit of extermination is making itself manifest, in the inhospitable shutting out of aliens, by those who themselves were aliens in the lands they now occupy. But India tolerated difference of races from the first, and that spirit of toleration has acted all through her history. Her caste system is the outcome of this spirit of toleration. For India has all along been trying experiments in evolving a social unity within which all the different peoples could be held together, while fully enjoying the freedom of maintaining their own differences. The tie has been as loose as possible, yet as close as the circumstances permitted. This has produced something like a United States of a social federation, whose common name is Hinduism. India

Rabindranath Tagore

Open your door to that which must go,

for the loss becomes unseemly when obstructed.

Rabindranath Tagore

On the day when the lotus bloomed, alas, my mind was straying, and I knew it not. My basket was empty and the flower remained unheeded.

Only now and again a sadness fell upon me, and I started up from my dream and felt a sweet trace of a strange fragrance in the south wind.

That vague sweetness made my heart ache with longing and it seemed to me that is was the eager breath of the summer seeking for its completion.

I knew not then that it was so near, that it was mine, and that this perfect sweetness had blossomed in the depth of my own heart.

Rabindranath Tagore

One morning in the flower garden a blind girl came to offer me a flower chain in the cover of a lotus leaf. I put it round my neck, and tears came to my eyes. I kissed her and said, “You are blind even as the flowers are. You yourself know not how beautiful is your gift.

Rabindranath Tagore

Our music draws the listener away, beyond the limits of everyday human joys and sorrows, and takes us to that lonely region of renunciation which lies to the root of the universe, while European music leads us to a variegated dance through the endless rise and fall of human grief and joy.

Rabindranath Tagore

O thou the last fulfilment of life, Death, my death, come and whisper to me!

Day after day I have kept watch for thee; for thee have I borne the joys and pangs of life.

All that I am, that I have, that I hope and all my love have ever flowed towards thee in depth of secrecy. One final glance from thine eyes and my life will be ever thine own.

The flowers have been woven and the garland is ready for the bridegroom. After the wedding the bride shall leave her home and meet her lord alone in the solitude of night.

Rabindranath Tagore

On the day when death will knock at thy door what wilt thou offer to him?

Oh, I will set before my guest the full vessel of my life—I will never let him go with empty hands.

All the sweet vintage of all my autumn days and summer nights, all the earnings and gleanings of my busy life will I place before him at the close of my days when death will knock at my door.

Rabindranath Tagore

On many an idle day have I grieved over lost time. But it is never lost, my lord. Thou hast taken every moment of my life in thine own hands.

Hidden in the heart of things thou art nourishing seeds into sprouts, buds into blossoms, and ripening flowers into fruitfulness.

I was tired and sleeping on my idle bed and imagined all work had ceased. In the morning I woke up and found my garden full with wonders of flowers.

Rabindranath Tagore

Of course, I’m dying to be about for ever so long. I’ll ask the King to find me the polar star. I must have seen it often, but I don’t know exactly which it is.

Rabindranath Tagore

P

Praise shames me, for I secretly beg for it.

Rabindranath Tagore

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

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

Perhaps the crescent moon smiles in doubt

at being told that it is a fragment

awaiting perfection.

Rabindranath Tagore

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.

Rabindranath Tagore

Poems On Time

The butterfly counts not months but moments,
and has time enough.

Time is a wealth of change,
but the clock in its parody makes it mere change and no wealth.

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

Rabindranath Tagore

Pleasure is frail like a dewdrop, while it laughs it dies. But
sorrow is strong and abiding. Let sorrowful love wake in your
eyes.

Rabindranath Tagore

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.

Rabindranath Tagore

Perfect gain is the best of all; but if that is impossible, then the next best gain is perfect losing.

Rabindranath Tagore

Pluck this little flower and take it, delay not! I fear lest it droop and drop into the dust.

I may not find a place in thy garland, but honour it with a touch of pain from thy hand and pluck it. I fear lest the day end before I am aware, and the time of offering go by.

Though its colour be not deep and its smell be faint, use this flower in thy service and pluck it while there is time.

Rabindranath Tagore

“Passing Breeze”

Yes, I know, this is nothing but thy love,
O beloved of my heart—-this golden light that dances upon the leaves,
these idle clouds sailing across the sky,
this passing breeze leaving its coolness upon my forehead.

The morning light has flooded my eyes—-this is thy message to my heart.
Thy face is bent from above, thy eyes look down on my eyes,
and my heart has touched thy feet.

Rabindranath Tagore

Pride engraves his frowns in stones;

love offers her surrender in flowers.

Rabindranath Tagore

R

Reach high, for stars lie hidden in you. Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal.

Rabindranath Tagore

Religion is not a fractional thing that can be doled out in fixed weekly or daily measures as one among various subjects in the school syllabus. It is the truth of our complete being, the consciousness of our personal relationship with the infinite; it is the true center of gravity of our life. This we can attain during our childhood by daily living in a place where the truth of the spiritual world is not obscured by a crowd of necessities assuming artificial importance; where life is simple, surrounded by fullness of leisure, by ample space and pure air and profound peace of nature; and where men live with a perfect faith in the eternal life before them.

Rabindranath Tagore

Read books when you are free, read minds when you are’nt….but do read…

Rabindranath Tagore

Peace, my heart, let the time for the parting be sweet. Let it not be a death but completeness. Let love melt into memory and pain into songs. Let the flight through the sky end in the folding of the wings over the nest. Let the last touch of your hands be gentle like the flower of the night. Stand still, O Beautiful End, for a moment, and say your last words in silence. I bow to you and hold up my lamp to light you on your way.

Rabindranath Tagore

Reality is the harmony which gives to the component parts of a thing the equilibrium of the whole.

Rabindranath Tagore

S

Set the bird’s wings with gold and it will never again soar in the sky.

Rabindranath Tagore

Stray birds of summer come to my window to sing and fly away. And yellow leaves of autumn, which have no songs, flutter and fall there with a sigh.

Rabindranath Tagore

Some day 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.

Rabindranath Tagore

Strong Mercy:

My desires are many and my cry is pitiful,
but ever didst thou save me by hard refusals;
and this strong mercy has been wrought into my life through and through.

Day by day thou art making me worthy of the simple,
great gifts that thou gavest to me unasked—this sky and the light, this body and the
life and the mind—saving me from perils of overmuch desire.

There are times when I languidly linger
and times when I awaken and hurry in search of my goal;
but cruelly thou hidest thyself from before me.

Day by day thou art making me worthy of thy full acceptance by
refusing me ever and anon, saving me from perils of weak, uncertain desire.

Rabindranath Tagore

So in the streets of Calcutta I sometimes imagine myself a foreigner, and only then do I discover how much is to be seen, which is lost so long as its full value in attention is not paid. It is the hunger to really see which drives people to travel to strange places.

Rabindranath Tagore

Spurious fame spreads from tongue to tongue like the fog of the early dawn before the sun rises.

Rabindranath Tagore

“Stray birds of the summer come to my window to sing and fly away.
And yellow leaves of autumn, which have no songs, flutter and fall there with a sigh.
O TROUPE of little vagrants of the world, leave your footprints in my words . . .

Rabindranath Tagore

Sin is the blurring of truth which clouds the purity of our consciousness. In sin we lust after pleasures, not because they are truly desirable, but because the red light of our passions makes them appear desirable; we long for things not because they are great in themselves, but because our greed exaggerates them and makes them appear great.

Rabindranath Tagore

Such lavish devotion made me proud to think that the wealth was all my own which drove you to my gate. But vanity such as this only checks the flow of free surrender in a woman’s love. When I sit on he queen’s throne and claim homage, then the claim only goes on magnifying itself; it is never satisfied. Can there be any real happiness for a woman in merely feeling that she has power over a man? To surrender one’s pride in devotion is woman’s only salvation.

Rabindranath Tagore

T

The spirit of rejection finds its support in the consciousness of separateness; the spirit of acceptance finds its base in the consciousness of unity.

Rabindranath Tagore

These were autumn mornings, the very time of year when kings of old went forth to conquest; and I, never stirring from my little corner in Calcutta, would let my mind wander over the whole world.

Rabindranath Tagore

To thee, to thee, my fire! Thou hast been burning in my heart all these futile years. If my life were a piece of gold it would come out of its trial brighter, but it is a trodden turf of grass, and nothing remains of it but this handful of ashes.

Rabindranath Tagore

…the authors he has himself discovered are his own exclusive territory, like the saloon compartment of a special train.

Rabindranath Tagore

THE mind, sharp but not broad, sticks at every point but does not move.

Rabindranath Tagore

The sleep that flits on baby’s eyes – does anybody know from where it comes? Yes, there is a rumour that it has its dwelling where, in the fairy village among shadows of the forest dimly lit with glow-worms, there hang two timid buds of enchantment. From there it comes to kiss baby’s eyes.

The smile that flickers on baby’s lips when he sleeps – does anybody know where it was born? Yes, there is a rumour 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 – the smile that flickers on baby’s lips when he sleeps.

The sweet, soft freshness that blooms on baby’s limbs – does anybody know where it was hidden so long? Yes, when the mother was a young girl it lay pervading her heart in tender and silent mystery of love – the sweet, soft freshness that has bloomed on baby’s limbs.

Rabindranath Tagore

The time that my journey takes is long and the way of it long.

I came out on the chariot of the first gleam of light, and pursued my voyage through the wildernesses of worlds leaving my track on many a star and planet.

It is the most distant course that comes nearest to thyself, and that training is the most intricate which leads to the utter simplicity of a tune.

The traveller 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.

My eyes strayed far and wide before I shut them and said `Here art thou!’

The question and the cry ‘Oh, where?’ melt into tears of a thousand streams and deluge the world with the flood of the assurance ‘I am!

Rabindranath Tagore

To try to give our infatuation a higher place than Truth is a sign of inherent slavishness. Where our minds are free we find ourselves lost. Our moribund vitality must have for its rider either some fantasy, or someone in authority, or a sanction from the pundits, in order to make it move. So long as we are
impervious to truth and have to be moved by some hypnotic stimulus, we must know that we lack the capacity for self- government. Whatever may be our condition, we shall either need some imaginary ghost or some actual medicine-man to terrorize over us.

Rabindranath Tagore

The morning sea of silence broke into ripples of bird songs; and the flowers were all merry by the roadside; and the wealth of gold was scattered through the rift of the clouds while we busily went on our way and paid no heed.

We sang no glad songs nor played; we went not to the village for barter; we spoke not a word nor smiled; we lingered not on the way. We quickened our pace more and more as the time sped by.

The sun rose to the mid sky and doves cooed in the shade. Withered leaves danced and whirled in the hot air of noon. The shepherd boy drowsed and dreamed in the shadow of the banyan tree, and I laid myself down by the water and stretched my tired limbs on the grass.

My companions laughed at me in scorn; they held their heads high and hurried on; they never looked back nor rested; they vanished in the distant blue haze. They crossed many meadows and hills, and passed through strange, far-away countries. All honour to you, heroic host of the interminable path! Mockery and reproach pricked me to rise, but found no response in me. I gave myself up for lost in the depth of a glad humiliation—in the shadow of a dim delight.

The repose of the sun-embroidered green gloom slowly spread over my heart. I forgot for what I had travelled, and I surrendered my mind without struggle to the maze of shadows and songs.

At last, when I woke from my slumber and opened my eyes, I saw thee standing by me, flooding my sleep with thy smile. How I had feared that the path was long and wearisome, and the struggle to reach thee was hard!

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. It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth and of death, in ebb and in flow. I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life. And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment.

Rabindranath Tagore

The greed of gain has no time or limit to its capaciousness. It’s one object is to produce and consume. It has pity neither for beautiful nature nor for living human beings. It is ruthlessly ready without a moment’s hesitation to crush beauty and life out of them, molding them into money.

Rabindranath Tagore

The fundamental desire of life is the desire to exist.

Rabindranath Tagore

The potentiality of perfection outweighs actual contradictions… Existence in itself is here to prove that it cannot be an evil.

Rabindranath Tagore

The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.

Rabindranath Tagore

The burden of the self is lightened with I laugh at myself.

Rabindranath Tagore

The biggest changes in a women’s nature are brought by love; in man, by ambition

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

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

The flower which is single need not envy the thorns that are numerous.

Rabindranath Tagore

The mountain remains unmoved at seeming defeat by the mist.

Rabindranath Tagore

The newer people, of this modern age, are more eager to amass than to realize.

Rabindranath Tagore

The current of the world has its boundaries, otherwise it could have no existence, but its purpose is not shown in the boundaries which restrain it, but in its movement, which is toward perfection. The wonder is not that there should be obstacles and

Rabindranath Tagore

The question why there is evil in existence is the same as why there is imperfection… But this is the real question we ought to ask: Is this imperfection the final truth, is evil absolute and ultimate?

Rabindranath Tagore

The progress of our soul is like a perfect poem. It has an infinite idea which once realized makes all movements full of meaning and joy. But if we detach its movements from that ultimate idea, if we do not see the infinite rest and only see the infi

Rabindranath Tagore

The smile that flickers on baby’s lips when he sleeps- does anybody know where it was borne? 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 . . . .

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

The revilement of the infinite in the finite, which is the motive of all creation, is not seen in its perfection in the starry heavens, in the beauty of the flowers. It is in the soul of man.

The emancipation of our physical nature is in attaining health, of our social being in attaining goodness, and of our self in attaining love.

Rabindranath Tagore

The echo mocks her origin to prove she is the original.

Rabindranath Tagore

The fundamental desire of life is the desire to exist.

Rabindranath Tagore

The greedy man who is fond of his fish stew has no compunction in cutting up the fish according to his need. But the man who loves the fish wants to enjoy it in the water; and if that is impossible he waits on the bank; and even if he comes back home without a sight of it he has the consolation of knowing that the fish is all right. Perfect gain is the best of all; but if that is impossible, then the next best gain is perfect losing.

Rabindranath Tagore

The fish in the water is silent, the animals on the earth is noisy, the bird in the air is singing. But man has in him the silence of the sea, the noise of the earth and the music of the air.

Rabindranath Tagore

The object of education is to give man the unity of truth. Formerly, when life was simple, all the different elements of man were in complete harmony. But when there came the separation of the intellect from the spiritual and the physical, the school

Rabindranath Tagore

The real friendship is like fluorescence, it shines better when everything has darken.

Rabindranath Tagore

The roots below the earth claim no rewards for making the branches fruitful.

Rabindranath Tagore

The stars are not afraid to appear like fireflies.

Rabindranath Tagore

The singer alone does not make a song,
there has to be someone who hears.

Rabindranath Tagore

The traveler has to knock at every alien door to come to his own, and he has to wonder through all the outer worlds to reach the innermost shrine at the end.

Rabindranath Tagore

The Taj Mahal rises above the banks of the river like a solitary tear suspended on the cheek of time.

Rabindranath Tagore

The touch of an infinite mystery passes over the trivial and the familiar, making it break out into ineffable music… The trees, the stars, and the blue hills ache with a meaning which can never be uttered in words.

Rabindranath Tagore

The sparrow is sorry for the peacock at the burden of its tail.

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…..

I have not seen his face,
nor have I listened to his voice;
only I have heard his gentle footsteps
from the road before my house…..

But the lamp has not been lit
and I cannot ask him into my house;
I live in the hope of meeting with him;
but this meeting is not yet.

Rabindranath Tagore

There is a point where in the mystery of existence contradictions meet; where movement is not all movement and stillness is not all stillness; where the idea and the form, the within and the without, are united; where infinite becomes finite, yet not

Rabindranath Tagore

There is no day nor night, nor form nor colour, and never, never a word. (#67)

Rabindranath Tagore

These paper boats of mine are meant to dance on the ripples of hours, and not reach any destination.

Rabindranath Tagore

Things are distinct not in their essence but in their appearance; in other words, in their relation to one to whom they appear. This is art, the truth of which is not in substance or logic, but in expression. Abstract truth may belong to science and

Rabindranath Tagore

Those who draw their sustenance from science are blessed. It is for me to only derive an occasional pleasure. This is nothing worthy of conceit, but I am indeed touched by the joys. This book is an ode to such joys, a digest of my collections from various sources.

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

Those who in the name of Faith embrace illusion,
kill and are killed.
Even the atheist gets God’s blessings-
Does not boast of his religion;

With reverence he lights the lamp of Reason
And pays his homage not to scriptures,
But to the good in man.

The bigot insults his own religion
When he slays a man of another faith.
Conduct he judges not in the light of Reason;
In the temple he raises the blood-stained banner
And worships the devil in the name of God.

All that is shameful and barbarous through the Ages,
Has found a shelter in their temples-
Those they turn into prisons;
O, I hear the trumpet call of Destruction!
Time comes with her great broom
Sweeping all refuse away.

That which should make man free,
They turn into fetters;
That which should unite,
They turn into sword;
That which should bring love
From the fountain of the Eternal,
They turn into prison

And with its waves they flood the world.
They try to cross the river
In a bark riddled with holes;
And yet, in their anguish, whom do they blame?

O Lord, breaking false religion,
Save the blind!
Break! O break
The alter that is drowned in blood.

Let your thunder strike
Into the prison of false religion,

And bring to this unhappy land
The light of Knowledge.

Rabindranath Tagore

Time is a wealth of change, but the clock in its parody makes it mere change and no wealth.

Rabindranath Tagore

Trees are the earth’s endless effort to speak to the listening heaven.

Rabindranath Tagore

Those who own much have much to fear.

Rabindranath Tagore

To be outspoken is easy when you do not wait to speak the complete truth.

Rabindranath Tagore

to tyrannize for the country is to tyrannize over the country

Rabindranath Tagore

To understand anything is to find in it something which is our own, and it is the discovery of ourselves outside us which makes us glad. This relation of understanding is partial, but the relation of love is complete. In love the sense of difference

Rabindranath Tagore

Truth cannot afford to be tolerant where it faces positive evil.

Rabindranath Tagore

The young student sits with his head bent over his books, and his mind straying in youth’s dreamland; where prose is prowling on the desk and poetry hiding in the heart.

Rabindranath Tagore

The greed for fruit misses the flower.

Rabindranath Tagore

The world loved man when he smiled. The world became afraid of him when he laughed.

Rabindranath Tagore

that which is eternal within the moment only becomes shallow if spread out in time.

Rabindranath Tagore

Today I feel that I shall win through. I have come to the gateway of the simple; I am now content to see things as they are. I have gained freedom myself; I shall allow freedom to others. In my work will be my salvation.

Rabindranath Tagore

The little flower lies in the dust. It sought the path of the butterfly.

Rabindranath Tagore

The Child Angel

Let your life come amongst them like a flame of light, my child,

unflickering and pure, and delight them into silence.

They are cruel in their greed and their envy,

their words are like hidden knives thirsting for blood.

Go and stand amidst their scowling hearts, my child,

and let your gentle eyes fall upon them like the

forgiving peace of the evening over the strife of the day.

Let them see your face, my child, and thus know the

meaning of all things, let them love you and love each other.

Come and take your seat in the bosom of the limitless, my child.

At sunrise open and raise your heart like a blossoming flower,

and at sunset bend your head and in silence

complete the worship of the day.

Rabindranath Tagore

Truth in her dress finds facts too tight. In fiction she moves with ease.

Rabindranath Tagore

Those who wish to sit, shut their eyes,
and meditate to know if the world’s true or lies,
may do so. It’s their choice. But I meanwhile
with hungry eyes that can’t be satisfied
shall take a look at the world in broad daylight.

Rabindranath Tagore

The Stronger is the imagination the less imaginary it is

Rabindranath Tagore

The speech of my heart will be carried on in murmurings of a song.

Rabindranath Tagore

These days my sole desire is that our lives should be simple and straightforward, that all around us there should be peace and cheerfulness, that our way of life should be unostentatious and full of bounty, that our needs should be small and our aims high and our efforts unselfish and our work for others more important than our work for ourselves.

Rabindranath Tagore

The world has kissed my Soul with its pain, asking for its return in Songs.

Rabindranath Tagore

The music of the far-away summer flutters around the Autumn seeking its former nest.

Rabindranath Tagore

Tell him Sudha has not forgotten him.

Rabindranath Tagore

The light of thy music illumines the world. The life breath of thy music runs from sky to sky. The holy stream of thy music breaks through all stony obstacles and rushes on. My

Rabindranath Tagore

The birds looked upon me as nothing but a man, quite a trifling creature without wings—and they would have nothing to do with me. Were it not so I would build a small cabin for myself among their crowd of nests and pass my days counting the sea waves.

Rabindranath Tagore

The winds of grace are blowing all the time, but it is you that must raise your sails.

Rabindranath Tagore

The Song of the Defeated

My master has bid me while I stand at the roadside,
to sing the song of Defeat,
for that is the bride whom He woos in secret.
She has put on the dark veil,
hiding her face from the crowd,
but the jewel glows on her breast in the dark.
She is forsaken of the day,
and God’s night is waiting for her with its lamps lighted and flowers wet with dew.
She is silent with her eyes downcast;
she has left her home behind her,
from her home has come that wailing in the wind.
But the stars are singing the love-song of the eternal to a face sweet with shame and suffering.
The door has been opened in the lonely chamber,
the call has sounded,
and the heart of the darkness throbs with awe
because of the coming tryst.

Rabindranath Tagore

The one who plants trees, knowing that he will never sit in their shade, has at least started to understand the meaning of life.

Rabindranath Tagore

The winds of grace are always blowing, but it is you that must raise your sails.

Rabindranath Tagore

The song being great in its own wealth, why should it wait upon the words? Rather does it begin where mere words fail. Its power lies in the region of the inexpressible; it tells us what the words cannot.

Rabindranath Tagore

Thou hast made me known to friends whom I knew not. Thou hast given me seats in homes not my own. Thou hast brought the distant near and made a brother of the stranger.

I am uneasy at heart when I have to leave my accustomed shelter; I forget that there abides the old in the new, and that there also thou abidest.

Through birth and death, in this world or in others, wherever thou leadest me it is thou, the same, the one companion of my endless life who ever linkest my heart with bonds of joy to the unfamiliar.

When one knows thee, then alien there is none, then no door is shut. Oh, grant me my prayer that I may never lose the bliss of the touch of the one in the play of many.

Rabindranath Tagore

The pain of dwelling on the wrongs done to us by other people far exceeds the little bit of pleasure we derive from condemning others for their guilt.

Rabindranath Tagore

…those in this world who have the courage to try and solve in their own lives new problems of life are the ones who raise society to greatness! Those who merely live according to rule do not advance society, they only carry it along.

Rabindranath Tagore

True modernism is freedom of mind, not slavery of taste. It is independence of thought and action, not tutelage under European schoolmasters.

Rabindranath Tagore

THE mighty desert is burning for the love of a blade of grass who shakes her head and laughs and flies away.

Rabindranath Tagore

The water vessel, taken as a vessel only, raises the question, “Why does it exist at all?” Through its fitness of construction, it offers the apology for its existence. But where it is a work of beauty it has no question to answer; it has nothing to do, but to be.

Rabindranath Tagore

The child, who is decked with prince’s robes and who has jewelled chains round his neck loses all pleasure in his play; his dress hampers him at every step. In fear that it may be frayed, or stained with dust he keeps himself from the world, and is afraid even to move. Mother, it is no gain, thy bondage of finery, if it keep one shut off from the healthful dust of the earth, if it rob one of the right of entrance to the great fair of common human life.

Rabindranath Tagore

truth and falsehood mingle in life—and to what God builds, man adds his own decoration.

Rabindranath Tagore

They come from my imagination; for, as you know, truth is silent, and it is imagination only which waxes eloquent. Reality represses the flow of feeling like a rock; imagination cuts out a path for itself.

Rabindranath Tagore

The civilization of ancient Greece was nurtured within city walls. In fact, all the modern civilizations have their cradles of brick and mortar.
These walls leave their mark deep in the minds of men. They set up a principle of “divide and rule” in our mental outlook, which begets in us a habit of securing all our conquests by fortifying them and separating them from one another. We divide nation and nation, knowledge and knowledge, man and nature. It breeds in us a strong suspicion of whatever is beyond the barriers we have built, and everything has to fight hard for its entrance into our recognition.

Rabindranath Tagore

The shore whispers to the sea: “Write to me what your waves struggle to say.”

The sea writes in foam again and again and wipes off the lines in a boisterous despair.

Rabindranath Tagore

Time is endless in thy hands, my lord. There is none to count thy minutes.

Days and nights pass and ages bloom and fade like flowers. Thou knowest how to wait.

Thy centuries follow each other perfecting a small wild flower.

We have no time to lose, and having no time we must scramble for a chances. We are too poor to be late.

And thus it is that time goes by while I give it to every querulous man who claims it, and thine altar is empty of all offerings to the last.

At the end of the day I hasten in fear lest thy gate to be shut; but I find that yet there is time.

Rabindranath Tagore

There are things that cannot wait. You have to rush and run and march if you must fight or take the best place in the market. You strain your nerves and are on the alert when you chase opportunities that are always on the wing. But there are ideals which do not play hide-and-seek with our life; they slowly grow from seed to flower, from flower to fruit; they require infinite space and heaven’s light to mature, and the fruits that they produce can survive years of insult and neglect. The East with her ideals, in whose bosom are stored the ages of sunlight and silence of stars, can patiently wait till the West, hurrying after the expedient, loses breath and stops. Europe, while busily speeding to her engagements, disdainfully casts her glance from her carriage window at the reaper reaping his harvest in the field, and in her intoxication of speed cannot but think him as slow and ever receding backwards. But the speed comes to its end, the engagement loses its meaning and the hungry heart clamours for food, till at last she comes to the lowly reaper reaping his harvest in the sun. For if the office cannot wait, or the buying and selling, or the craving for excitement, love waits and beauty and the wisdom of suffering and the fruits of patient devotion and reverent meekness of simple faith. And thus shall wait the East till her time comes.

Rabindranath Tagore

The soil in return for her service keeps the tree tied to her; the sky asks nothing and leaves it free.

Rabindranath Tagore

The highest mission of education is to help us to realise the inner principle of the unity of all knowledge and all the activities of our social and spiritual being.

Rabindranath Tagore

They who from birth have had no other speech than the trembling of their lips learn a language of the eyes, endless in expression, deep as the sea, clear as the heavens, wherein play dawn and sunset, light and shadow. The dumb have a lonely grandeur like Nature’s own. Wherefore

Rabindranath Tagore

The world by day is like European music; a flowing concourse of vast harmony, composed of concord and discord and many disconnected fragments. And the night world is our Indian music; one pure, deep and tender raga.

Rabindranath Tagore

The idea became rooted in my mind that I had a special right to Surabala above that of people in general. So it happened that, in the pride of ownership, at times I punished and tormented her; and she, too, fagged for me and bore all my punishments without complaint. The village was wont to praise her beauty; but in the eyes of a young barbarian like me that beauty had no glory;—I knew only that Surabala had been born in her father’s house solely to bear my yoke, and that therefore she was the particular object of my neglect.

Rabindranath Tagore

There, there is neither body nor mind: and where is the place that shall still the thirst of the soul? You shall find naught in that emptiness. Be strong, and enter into your own body: for there your foothold is firm. Consider it well, O my heart! go not elsewhere, Kabîr says: “Put all imaginations away, and stand fast in that which you are.

Rabindranath Tagore

The lad himself becomes painfully self-conscious. When he talks with elderly people he is either unduly forward, or else so unduly shy that he appears ashamed of his very existence.

Rabindranath Tagore

That which oppresses me, is it my soul trying to come out in the open, or the soul of the world knocking at my heart for its entrance?

Rabindranath Tagore

The singer alone does not make a song,
there has to be someone who hears.
One man opens his throat to sing, the other sings in his mind.
Only when waves fall on the shore do they make a harmonious sound;
Only when breezes shake the woods do we hear a rustling in the leaves.
Only from a marriage of two forces does music arise in the world.
Where there is no love, where listeners are dumb, there never can be song.

Rabindranath Tagore

The man whose acquaintance with the world does not lead him deeper than science leads him, will never understand what it is that the man with the spiritual vision finds in these natural phenomena.

Rabindranath Tagore

Turn a tree into a log and it will burn for you, but it will never bear living flowers and fruit.

Rabindranath Tagore

V

Vanity is not like a horse or an elephant requiring expensive fodder.

Rabindranath Tagore

W

Want of love is a degree of callousness; for love is the perfection of consciousness. We do not love because we do not comprehend, or rather we do not comprehend because we do not love. For love is the ultimate meaning of everything around us. It is

Rabindranath Tagore

Whatever we understand and enjoy in human products instantly becomes ours, wherever they might have their origin… Let me feel with unalloyed gladness that all the great glories of man are mine.

Rabindranath Tagore

Where the old tracks are lost, new country is revealed with its wonders.

Rabindranath Tagore

What is Art? It is the response of man’s creative soul to the call of the Real.

Rabindranath Tagore

What seems to be coming at you is really coming from you

Rabindranath Tagore

When we rejoice in our fullness, then we can part with out fruits with joy.

Rabindranath Tagore

We live in the world when we love it.

Rabindranath Tagore

We gain freedom when we have paid the full price.

Rabindranath Tagore

We gain freedom when we have paid the full price for our right to live.

Rabindranath Tagore

We come nearest to the great when we are great in humility.

Rabindranath Tagore

We [poets] set men free from their desires.

Rabindranath Tagore

We come nearest to the great when we are great in humility.

Rabindranath Tagore

We cross infinity with every step;

we meet eternity in every second.

Rabindranath Tagore

We can make truth ours by actively modulating its inter-relations. This is the work of art; for reality is not based in the substance of things but in the principle of relationship. Truth is the infinite pursued by metaphysics; fact is the infinite p

Rabindranath Tagore

We read the world wrong and say that it deceives us.

Rabindranath Tagore

When we accept any discipline for ourselves, we try to avoid everything except that which is necessary for our purpose; it is this purposefulness, which belongs to the adult mind, that we force upon school children. We say, “Never keep your mind aler

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 towards perfection; Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way in the dreary desert sand of dead habit; Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever widening thought and action…. into that heaven of freedom, my father, let my country awake.

Rabindranath Tagore

Where is heaven? you ask me, my child,-the sages tell us it is
beyond the limits of birth and death, unswayed by the rhythm of day
and night; it is not of the earth.

But your poet knows that its eternal hunger is for time and
space, and it strives evermore to be born in the fruitful dust.
Heaven is fulfilled in your sweet body, my child, in your
palpitating heart.

The sea is beating its drums in joy, the flowers are a-tiptoe
to kiss you. For heaven is born in you, in the arms of the mother-
dust.

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

when you came you cried and everybody smiled with joy; when you go smile and let the world cry for you.

Rabindranath Tagore

When I go from hence, let this be my parting word, that what I have seen is unsurpassable.

I have tasted of the hidden honey of this lotus that expands on the ocean of light, and thus I am blessed—let this be my parting word.

In this playhouse of infinite forms I have had my play and here have I caught sight of him who is formless.

My whole body and my limbs have thrilled with his touch who is beyond touch; and if the end comes here, let it come—let this be my parting word.

Rabindranath Tagore

WHEN I GO ALONE AT NIGHT

WHEN I go alone at night to my love-tryst, birds do not sing, the wind does not stir, the houses on both sides of the street stand silent.

It is my own anklets that grow loud at every step and I am ashamed.

When I sit on my balcony and listen for his footsteps, leaves do not rustle on the trees, and the water is still in the river like the sword on the knees of a sentry fallen asleep.

It is my own heart that beats wildly — I do not know how to quiet it.

When my love comes and sits by my side, when my body trembles and my eyelids droop, the night darkens, the wind blows out the lamp, and the clouds draw veils over the stars.

It is the jewel at my own breast that shines and gives light. I do not know how to hide it.

Rabindranath Tagore

WE ARE TO PLAY THE GAME OF DEATH

E are to play the game of death to-night, my bride and I.

The night is black, the clouds in the sky are capricious, and the waves are raving at sea.

We have left our bed of dreams, flung open the door and come out, my bride and I.

We sit upon a swing, and the storm winds give us a wild push from behind.

My bride starts up with fear and delight, she trembles and clings to my breast.

Long have I served her tenderly.

I made for her a bed of flowers and I closed the doors to shut out the rude light from her eyes.

I kissed her gently on her lips and whispered softly in her ears till she half swooned in languor.

She was lost in the endless mist of vague sweetness.

She answered not to my touch, my songs failed to arouse her.

To-night has come to us the call of the storm from the wild.

My bride has shivered and stood up, she has clasped my hand and come out.

Her hair is flying in the wind, her veil is fluttering, her garland rustles over her breast.

The push of death has swung her into life.

We are face to face and heart to heart, my bride and I.

Rabindranath Tagore

When I go from hence, let this be my parting word, that what I have seen is unsurpassable.

Rabindranath Tagore

Where are those tears in your eyes, my child?
How horrid of them to be always scolding you for nothing!
You have stained your fingers and face with ink while writing-
is that why they call you dirty?
O, fie! Would they dare to call the full moon dirty because
it has smudged its face with ink?
For every little trifle they blame you, my child. They are
ready to find fault for nothing.
You tore your clothes while playing-is that why they call you
untidy?
O, fie! What would they call an autumn morning that smiles
through its ragged clouds?
Take no heed of what they say to you, my child.
They make a long list of your misdeeds.
Everybody knows how you love sweet things-is that why they
call you greedy?
O, fie! What then would they call us who love you?

Rabindranath Tagore

Who are you, reader, reading my poems a hundred years hence?
I cannot send you one single flower from this wealth of the spring, one single streak of gold from yonder clouds.
Open your doors and look abroad.
From your blossoming garden gather fragrant memories of the vanished flowers of an hundred years before.
In the joy of your heart may you feel the living joy that sang one spring morning, sending its glad voice across an hundred years.

Rabindranath Tagore

When you have finished with others, that is my time.

Rabindranath Tagore

What you are you do not see, what you see is your shadow.

Rabindranath Tagore

Woman knows man well enough where he is weak, but she is quite unable to fathom him where he is strong. The fact is that man is as much a mystery to woman as woman is to man. If that were not so, the separation of the sexes would only have been a waste of Nature’s energy.

Rabindranath Tagore

When the knife was busy with my life’s most intimate tie, my mind was so clouded with fumes of intoxicating gas that I was not in the least aware of what a cruel thing was happening. Possibly this is woman’s nature. When her passion is roused she louses her sensibility for all that is outside it. When, like the river, we women keep to our banks, we give nourishment with all that we have: when we overflow them we destroy with all that we are.

Rabindranath Tagore

Where roads are made I lose my way.

In the wide water, in the blue sky there is no line of a track.

The pathway is hidden by the birds’ wings, by the star-fires, by the flowers of the wayfaring seasons.

And I ask my heart if its blood carries the wisdom of the unseen way.

Rabindranath Tagore

Why did the flower fade? I pressed it to my heart with anxious love, that is why the flower faded.

Rabindranath Tagore

We can look upon a road from two different points of view. One regards it as dividing us from the object of our desire; in that case we count every step of our journey over it as something attained by force in the face of obstruction. The other sees it as the road which leads us to our destination; and as such it is part of our goal.

Rabindranath Tagore

When I bring to you coloured toys, my child, I understand why there is such a play of colours on clouds, on water, and why flowers are painted in tints—when I give coloured toys to you, my child.

When I sing to make you dance I truly now why there is music in leaves, and why waves send their chorus of voices to the heart of the listening earth—when I sing to make you dance.

When I bring sweet things to your greedy hands I know why there is honey in the cup of the flowers and why fruits are secretly filled with sweet juice—when I bring sweet things to your greedy hands.

When I kiss your face to make you smile, my darling, I surely understand what pleasure streams from the sky in morning light, and what delight that is that is which the summer breeze brings to my body—when I kiss you to make you smile.

Rabindranath Tagore

When a man does not realize his kinship with the world, he lives in a prison-house whose walls are alien to him. When he meets the eternal spirit in all objects, then is he emancipated, for then he discovers the fullest significance of the world into which he is born; then he finds himself in perfect truth, and his harmony with the all is established. In India men are enjoined to be fully awake to the fact that they are in the closest relation to things around them, body and soul, and that they are to hail the morning sun, the flowing water, the fruitful earth, as the manifestation of the same living truth which holds them in its embrace.

Rabindranath Tagore

While thus engaged, I heard in a side-room the softest possible jingle of bracelets, crackle of dress, and footfall; and I felt certain that two curious eyes were watching me through a small opening of the window. All at once there flashed upon my memory a pair of eyes,—a pair of large eyes, beaming with trust, simplicity, and girlhood’s love,—black pupils,—thick dark eyelashes,—a calm fixed gaze. Suddenly some unseen force squeezed my heart in an iron grip, and it throbbed with intense pain. I returned to my house, but the pain clung to me. Whether I read, wrote, or did any other work, I could not shake that weight off my heart; a heavy load seemed to be always swinging from my heart-strings. In the evening, calming myself a little, I began to reflect: ‘What ails me?’ From within came the question: ‘Where is your Surabala now?’ I replied: ‘I gave her up of my free will. Surely I did not expect her to wait for me for ever.’ But something kept saying: ‘Then you could have got her merely for the asking. Now you have not the right to look at her even once, do what you will. That Surabala of your boyhood may come very close to you; you may hear the jingle of her bracelets; you may breathe the air embalmed by the essence of her hair,—but there will always be a wall between you two.’ I answered: ‘Be it so. What is Surabala to me?’ My heart rejoined: ‘To-day Surabala is nobody to you. But what might she not have been to you?’ Ah! that’s true. What might she not have been to me? Dearest to me of all things, closer to me than the world besides, the sharer of all my life’s joys and sorrows,—she might have been. And now, she is so distant, so much of a stranger, that to look on her is forbidden, to talk with her is improper, and to think of her is a sin!—while this Ram Lochan, coming suddenly from nowhere, has muttered a few set religious texts, and in one swoop has carried off Surabala from the rest of mankind! I have not come to preach a new ethical code, or to revolutionise society; I have no wish to tear asunder domestic ties. I am only expressing the exact working of my mind, though it may not be reasonable. I could not by any means banish from my mind the sense that Surabala, reigning there within shelter of Ram Lochan’s home, was mine far more than his. The thought was, I admit, unreasonable and improper,—but it was not unnatural.

Rabindranath Tagore

WE come nearest to the great when we are great in humility.

Rabindranath Tagore

We are in misery because we are creatures of self – the self that is unyielding and narrow, that reflects no light, that is blind to the infinite. Our self is loud with its own discordant clamour – it is not the tuned harp whose chords vibrate with the music of the eternal. Sighs of discontent and weariness of failure, idle regrets for the past and anxieties for the future are troubling our shallow hearts because we have not found our souls, and the self-revealing spirit has not been manifest within us. Hence our cry.

Rabindranath Tagore

We never cared for such useless things as knowledge. We only cared for truth. And our unsophisticated little hearts knew well where the Crystal Palace of Truth lay and how to reach it. But to-day we are expected to write pages of facts, while the truth is simply this: “There was a king.

Rabindranath Tagore

When I come to the country I cease to view man as separate from the rest. As the river runs through many a clime, so does the stream of men babble on, winding through woods and villages and towns. It is not a true contrast that men may come and men may go, but I go on for ever. Humanity, with all its confluent streams, big and small, flows on and on, just as does the river, from its source in birth to its sea in death- two dark mysteries at either end, and between them various play and work and chattering unceasing.

Rabindranath Tagore

When Death comes and whispers to me, “Your days are ended,” let me say to him, “I have lived in love and not in mere time.” He will ask, “Will your songs remain?” I shall say, “I know not, but this I know, that often when I sang I found my eternity.

Rabindranath Tagore

We have seen that in order to be powerful we have to submit to the laws of the universal forces, and to realise in practice that they are our own. So, in order to be happy, we have to submit our individual will to the sovereignty of the universal will, and to feel in truth that it is our own will. When we reach that state wherein the adjustment of the finite in us to the infinite is made perfect, then pain itself becomes a valuable asset.

Rabindranath Tagore

When we express our thought in words, the medium is not found easily. There must be a process of translation, which is often inexact, and then we fall into error. But

Rabindranath Tagore

When we were young, we understood all sweet things; and we could detect the sweets of a fairy story by an unerring science of our own. We never cared for such useless things as knowledge. We only cared for truth.

Rabindranath Tagore

When a material body breaks it may be put together again. But when two human beings are divided, after a long separation, they never re-unite at the same place, and to the same time; for the mind is a living thing, and moment by moment it grows and changes.

Rabindranath Tagore

Y

You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water. Don’t let yourself indulge in vain wishes.

Rabindranath Tagore

Your idol is shattered in the dust to prove that God’s dust is greater than your idol.

Rabindranath Tagore

You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water. Don’t let yourself indulge in vain wishes.

Rabindranath Tagore

You smiled and talked to me of nothing and I felt that for this I had been waiting long.

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

Yes, this is the logic of the Nation. And it
will never heed the voice of truth and goodness.
It will go on in its ring-dance of moral corruption,
linking steel unto steel, and machine unto
machine; trampling under its tread all the sweet
flowers of simple faith and the living ideals of
man.

Rabindranath Tagore

You are dark, even as the flints are. You must come to violent conflicts and make a noise in order to produce your sparks. But their disconnected flashes merely assist your pride, and not your clear vision.

Rabindranath Tagore

You have set me among those who are defeated.

I know it is not for me to win, nor to leave the game.

I shall plunge into the pool although but to sink to the bottom.

I shall play the game of my undoing.

I shall stake all I have and when I lose my last penny I shall stake myself, and then I think I shall have won through my utter defeat.

Rabindranath Tagore

YOUR speech is simple, my Master, but not theirs who talk of you.

Rabindranath Tagore

Your lips are bitter-sweet with the taste of my wine of pain.

Rabindranath Tagore

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