Rabindranath Tagore Quotes

Man is worse than an animal when he is an animal.
Rabindranath Tagore
The butterfly counts not months but moments And has time enough.
Rabindranath Tagore
I have observed on board a steamer how men and women easily give way to their instinct for flirtation because water has the power of washing away our sense of responsibility and those who on land resemble the oak in their firmness behave like floating seaweed when on the sea.
Rabindranath Tagore
Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark.
Rabindranath Tagore
With begging and scrambling we find very little but with being true to ourselves we find a great deal more.
Rabindranath Tagore
Not hammer strokes but dance of the water sings the pebbles into perfection.
Rabindranath Tagore
Time is a wealth of change but the clock in its parody makes it mere change and no wealth.
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
With begging and scrambling we find very little but with being true to ourselves we find a great deal more.
Rabindranath Tagore
Not hammer strokes but dance of the water sings the pebbles into perfection.
Rabindranath Tagore
Time is a wealth of change but the clock in its parody makes it mere change and no wealth.
Rabindranath Tagore
The butterfly counts not months but moments and has time enough.
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
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
Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time like dew on the tip of a leaf.
Rabindranath Tagore
A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it.
Rabindranath Tagore
Men are cruel but man is kind.
Rabindranath Tagore
God the Great Giver can open the whole universe to our gaze in the narrow space of a single lane.
Rabindranath Tagore
The mountain remains unmoved at seeming defeat by the mist.
Rabindranath Tagore
He only may chastise who loves.
Rabindranath Tagore
Where the old tracks are lost new country is revealed with its wonders.
Rabindranath Tagore
God respects me when I work but loves me when I sing.
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
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
Spurious fame spreads from tongue to tongue like the fog of the early dawn before the sun rises.
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
Now that a full flood of music has swept over our country, let Nikhil practise his scales, while we rouse the land with our cracked voices[.]
Rabindranath Tagore
These paper boats of mine are meant to dance on the ripples of hours, and not reach any destination.
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
The Taj Mahal rises above the banks of the river like a solitary tear suspended on the cheek of time.
Rabindranath Tagore
A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it.
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
A day came when all the rebel in me knew itself beaten, and then my whole nature bowed down in humble resignation in the dust. And then I saw... I saw that he was as incomparable in beauty as he was in terror. I was saved, I was rescued.
Rabindranath Tagore
I would have you come into the heart of the outer world and meet reality. Merely going on with your household duties, living your life in the world of household conventions and the drudgery of household tasks - you were not made for that! If we meet, and recognize each other, in the real world, then only will our love be true.
Rabindranath Tagore
You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.
Rabindranath Tagore
Adharmenaidhate tabat, tato bhadrani pashyati, tatah sapatnan jayati, - samulastu vinashyati. In unrightousness they prosper, in it they find their good, through it they defeat their enemies, - but they perish at the root.
Rabindranath Tagore
Man's poverty is abysmal, his wants are endless till he becomes truly conscious of his soul. Till then, the world to him is in a state of flux - a phantasm that is and is not.
Rabindranath Tagore
When a man sleeps he is shut up within the narrow activities of his physical life. He lives, but he knows not the varied relations of his life to his surroundings, - therefore he knows not himself.
Rabindranath Tagore
He who wants to do good, knocks at the gate; he who loves finds the gates open.
Rabindranath Tagore
When at last we have to die it will be time enough to get cold.While we are on fire let us seethe and boil.
Rabindranath Tagore
Read books when you are free, read minds when you are'nt....but do read...
Rabindranath Tagore
The winds of grace are blowing all the time, but it is you that must raise your sails.
Rabindranath Tagore
When I stand before thee at the day's end, thou shalt see my scars and know that I had my wounds and also my healing.
Rabindranath Tagore
Love is an endless mystery, because there is no reasonable cause that could explain it.
Rabindranath Tagore
A fancy comes to me--that desire can never attain its object--it need never attain it.
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 meanwhilewith hungry eyes that can't be satisfiedshall take a look at the world in broad daylight.
Rabindranath Tagore
Truth in her dress finds facts too tight. In fiction she moves with ease.
Rabindranath Tagore
The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures. It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth in numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.
Rabindranath Tagore
I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.
Rabindranath Tagore
It was the Kojagar full moon, and I was slowly pacing the riverside conversing with myself. It could hardly be called a conversation, as I was doing all the talking and my imaginary companion all the listening. The poor fellow had no chance of speaking up for himself, for was not mine the power to compel him helplessly to answer like a fool?But what a night it was! How often have I tried to write of such, but never got it done! There was not a line of ripple on the river; and from away over there, where the farthest shore of the distant main stream is seen beyond the other edge of the midway belt of sand, right up to this shore, glimmers a broad band of moonlight. Not a human being, not a boat in sight; not a tree, nor blade of grass on the fresh-formed island sand-bank.It seemed as though a desolate moon was rising upon a devastated earth; a random river wandering through a lifeless solitude; a long-drawn fairy-tale coming to a close over a deserted world,—all the kings and the princesses, their ministers and friends and their golden castles vanished, leaving the Seven Seas and Thirteen Rivers and the Unending Moor, over which the adventurous princes fared forth, wanly gleaming in the pale moonlight. I was pacing up and down like the last pulse-beats of this dying world. Every one else seemed to be on the opposite shore—the shore of life—where the British Government and the Nineteenth Century hold sway, and tea and cigarettes.
Rabindranath Tagore
My husband was very eager to take me out of purdah. One day I said to him, "What do I want with the outside world?""The outside world may want you," he replied.
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
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.
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, butfor the heart to conquer it.
Rabindranath Tagore
I sat wondering: Why is there always this deep shade of melancholy over the fields arid river banks, the sky and the sunshine of our country? And I came to the conclusion that it is because with us Nature is obviously the more important thing. The sky is free, the fields limitless; and the sun merges them into one blazing whole. In the midst of this, man seems so trivial. He comes and goes, like the ferry-boat, from this shore to the other; the babbling hum of his talk, the fitful echo of his song, is heard; the slight movement of his pursuit of his own petty desires is seen in the world's market-places: but how feeble, how temporary, how tragically meaningless it all seems amidst the immense aloofness of the Universe! The contrast between the beautiful, broad, unalloyed peace of Nature—calm, passive, silent, unfathomable,—and our own everyday worries—paltry, sorrow-laden, strife-tormented, puts me beside myself as I keep staring at the hazy, distant, blue line of trees which fringe the fields across the river. Where Nature is ever hidden, and cowers under mist and cloud, snow and darkness, there man feels himself master; he regards his desires, his works, as permanent; he wants to perpetuate them, he looks towards posterity, he raises monuments, he writes biographies; he even goes the length of erecting tombstones over the dead. So busy is he that he has not time to consider how many monuments crumble, how often names are forgotten!
Rabindranath Tagore
I have felt that you have been able to assimilate these secrets into your life, and the truth which lies in the beauty of all things has passed into your souls. A mere knowledge of things can be had in a short enough time, but their spirit can only be acquired by centuries of training and self-control.
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
The world has kissed my Soul with its pain, asking for its return in Songs.
Rabindranath Tagore
We cannot see Beauty till we let go our hold of it. It was Buddha who conquered the world, not Alexander - this is untrue when stated in dry prose - oh when shall we be able to sing it? When shall all these most intimate truths of the universe overflow the pages of printed books and leap out in a sacred stream like the Ganges from the Gangotrie?
Rabindranath Tagore
Beauty is in the ideal of perfect harmony which is in the Universal Being; Truth the perfect comprehension of the Universal Mind. We individuals approach it through our own mistakes and blunders, through our accumulated experiences, through our illumined consciousness — how, otherwise, can we know Truth?
Rabindranath Tagore