Rabindranath Tagore is well-known for his remarkable contributions in Indian as well as world literature. His literary reputation is influenced very much by regard for his poetry; however, he also wrote novels, essays, short stories, travelogues, dramas, and thousands of songs. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913.
Here are some of the best Rabindranath Tagore quotes:
1. You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.
2. I slept and dreamt that life was a joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was a joy.
3. Don’t limit a child to your own learning, for she was born in another time.
4. Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.
5. Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm but to add colour to my sunset sky.
6. seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times, in life after life, in age after age forever.
7. Trees are the earth’s endless effort to speak to the listening heaven.
8. The highest education is that which does not merely give us information but makes our life in harmony with all existence.
9. Love’s gift cannot be given, it waits to be accepted.
10. Love is an endless mystery because there is no reasonable cause that could explain it.
11. Love does not claim possession but gives freedom.
12. Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark.
13. Everything comes to us that belongs to us if we create the capacity to receive it.
14. Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man.
15. A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it.
16. You smiled and talked to me of nothing and I felt that for this I had been waiting long.
17. We come nearest to the great when we are great in humility.
18. Those who own much have much to fear.
19. The real friendship is like fluorescence, it shines better when everything has darkened.
20. The flower which is single need not envy the thorns that are numerous.
21. The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.
22. The burden of the self is lightened with I laugh at myself.
23. The biggest changes in a women’s nature are brought by love; in man, by ambition
24. 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.
25. Music fills the infinite between two souls.
26. Men are cruel, but Man is kind.
27. Love is the only reality and it is not a mere sentiment. It is the ultimate truth that lies at the heart of creation.
28. Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time like dew on the tip of a leaf.
29. Let my thoughts come to you, when I am gone, like the afterglow of sunset at the margin of starry silence.
30. Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers, but to be fearless in facing them.
31. Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain, but for the heart to conquer it.
32. Emancipation from the bondage of the soil is no freedom for the tree.
33. Depth of friendship does not depend on the length of acquaintance
34. By plucking her petals, you do not gather the beauty of the flower.
35. Beauty is truth’s smile when she beholds her own face in a perfect mirror.
36. Reach high, for stars lie hidden in you. Dream deep, for every dream, precedes the goal.
37. It is very simple to be happy, but it is very difficult to be simple.
38. In Art, man reveals himself and not his objects.
39. If you cry because the sun has gone out of your life, your tears will prevent you from seeing the stars.
40. Nirvana is not the blowing out of the candle. It is the extinguishing of the flame because the day has come.
41. 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.
42. I have spent many days stringing and unstringing my instrument while the song I came to sing remains unsung.
43. 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.
44. The weak can be terrible because they try furiously to appear strong.
45. 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.
46. If you shut the door to all errors, truth will be shut out.
47. The emancipation of our physical nature is in attaining health, of our social being in attaining goodness, and of ourselves in attaining love.
48. 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.
49. No civilized society can thrive upon victims, whose humanity has been permanently mutilated.
50. The roots below the earth claim no rewards for making the branches fruitful.
51. The mountain remains unmoved at seeming defeat by the mist.
52. Beauty is simply reality seen with the eyes of love.
53. Not hammer-strokes, but the dance of the water sings the pebbles into perfection.
54. Facts are many, but the truth is one.
55. God seeks comrades and claims love, the Devil seeks slaves and claims obedience.
56. Mistakes live in the neighbourhood of truth and therefore delude us.
57. To be outspoken is easy when you do not wait to speak the complete truth.
58. Love is not a mere impulse, it must contain truth, which is the law.
59. The most important lesson that man can learn from life, is not that there is pain in this world, but that it is possible for him to transmute it into joy.
60. The fundamental desire of life is the desire to exist.
61. Dreams can never be made captive.
62. Bigotry tries to keep truth safe in its hand with a grip that kills it.
63. Truth cannot afford to be tolerant where it faces positive evil.
64. We gain freedom when we have paid the full price for our right to live.
65. The one who plants trees, knowing that he will never sit in their shade, has at least started to understand the meaning of life.