Rabindranath Tagore Quotes - Page 2

I have never been able to make out," I began, "why women are so shy about being caught reading poetry.We men--lawyers, mechanics, or what not--may well feel ashamed. If we must read poetry, it should be at dead of night, within closed doors. But you women are so akin to poesy. The Creator Himself is a lyric poet, and Jayadeva must have practised the divine art seated at His feet.
Rabindranath Tagore
The time has come when I must divest Bimala of all the ideal decorations with which I decked her. It was owing to my own weakness that I indulged in such idolatry. I was too greedy. I created an angel of Bimala, in order to exaggerate my own enjoyment. But Bimala is what she is. It is preposterous to expect that she should assume the role of an angel for my pleasure. The Creator is under no obligation to supply me with angels, just because I have an avidity for imaginary perfection.
Rabindranath Tagore
We women are weak," replied Bimala. "So I suppose we must join in the conspiracy of the weak.""Women weak!" I exclaimed with a laugh. "Men belaud you as delicate and fragile, so as to delude you into thinking yourselves weak. But it is you women who are strong. Men make a great outward show of their so-called freedom, but those who know their inner minds are aware of their bondage. They havemanufactured scriptures with their own hands to bind themselves; with their very idealism they have made golden fetters of women to wind round their body and mind. If men had not that extraordinary faculty of entangling themselves in meshes of their own contriving, nothing could have kept them bound. But as foryou women, you have desired to conceive reality with body and soul. You have given birth to reality. You have suckled reality at your breasts.
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 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
The real frienship is like fluorescence, it shines better when everything has darken.
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
Free me as free is the forest fire, as is the thunder that laughs aloud and hurls defiance to darkness.
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
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
Life is indefinite--a bundle of contradictions. We men, with our ideas, strive to give it a particular shape by melting it into a particular mould--into the definiteness of success.
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
Reach high, for stars lie hidden in you. Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal.
Rabindranath Tagore
I shall not commit the grievous sin of losing faith in Man
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
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
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
Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man.
Rabindranath Tagore
The biggest changes in a women's nature are brought by love; in man, by ambition
Rabindranath Tagore
Deliverance is not for me in renunciation. I feel the embrace of freedom in a thousand bonds of delight.
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
The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.
Rabindranath Tagore
Don't limit a child to your own learning, for she was born in another time.
Rabindranath Tagore
Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark.
Rabindranath Tagore
Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.
Rabindranath Tagore
Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time like dew on the tip of a leaf.
Rabindranath Tagore
Love's gift cannot be given, it waits to be accepted.
Rabindranath Tagore
You smiled and talked to me of nothing and I felt that for this I had been waiting long.
Rabindranath Tagore
Unending LoveI seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times...In life after life, in age after age, forever.My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,In life after life, in age after age, forever.Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, it's age old pain,It's ancient tale of being apart or together.As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,Clad in the light of a pole-star, piercing the darkness of time.You become an image of what is remembered forever.You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.At the heart of time, love of one for another.We have played along side millions of lovers,Shared in the same shy sweetness of meeting,the distressful tears of farewell,Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in youThe love of all man's days both past and forever:Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life.The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours -And the songs of every poet past and forever.
Rabindranath Tagore