Rabindranath Tagore Quotes

267 Sourced Quotes

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

Rabindranath Tagore
I am restless. I am athirst for faraway 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.

Rabindranath Tagore
Life is perpetually creative because it contains in itself that surplus which ever overflows the boundaries of the immediate time and space, restlessly pursuing its adventure of expression in the varied forms of self-realization.

Rabindranath Tagore
Things in which we do not take joy are either a burden upon our minds to be got rid of at any cost; or they are useful, and therefore in temporary and partial relation to us, becoming burdensome when their utility is lost; or they are like wandering vagabonds, loitering for a moment on the outskirts of our recognition, and then passing on. A thing is only completely our own when it is a thing of joy to us.

Rabindranath Tagore
To tyrannize for the country is to tyrannize over the country

Rabindranath Tagore
In this playhouse of infinite forms I have had my play, and here have I caught sight of him that is formless.

Rabindranath Tagore
My debts are large, my failures great, my shame secret and heavy; yet I come to ask for my good, I quake in fear lest my prayer be granted.

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
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
O master poet, I have sat down at thy feet. Only let me make my life simple and straight, like a flute of reed for thee to fill with music.

Rabindranath Tagore
The heart wants to go on; that is its dharma. For unless it moves, it dies.

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

Rabindranath Tagore
The child learns so easily because he has a natural gift, but adults, because they are tyrants, ignore natural gifts and say that children must learn through the same process that they learned by. We insist upon forced mental feeding and our lessons

Rabindranath Tagore
The cure for all the illness of life is stored in the inner depth of life itself, the access to which becomes possible when we are alone. This solitude is a world in itself, full of wonders and resources unthought of. It is absurdly near; yet so unapproachably distant.

Rabindranath Tagore
From the grasses in the field to the stars in the sky, each one is doing just that; and there is such profound peace and surpassing beauty in nature because none of these tries forcibly to transgress its limitations.

Rabindranath Tagore
Discipline divorced from wisdom is not true discipline, but merely the meaningless following of custom, which is only a disguise for stupidity.

Rabindranath Tagore
It sometimes strikes me how immensely fortunate I am that each day should take its place in my life, either reddened with the rising and setting sun, or refreshingly cool with deep, dark clouds, or blooming like a white flower in the moonlight. What untold wealth!

Rabindranath Tagore
While God waits for his temple to be built of love, men bring stones.

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

Rabindranath Tagore
The wise man warns me that life is but a dewdrop on the lotus leaf.

Rabindranath Tagore
I thought that my invincible power would hold the world captive, leaving me in a freedom undisturbed. Thus night and day I worked at the chain with huge fires and cruel hard strokes. When at last the work was done and the links were complete and unbreakable, I found that it held me in its grip.

Rabindranath Tagore
Let me light my lamp", says the star, "And never debate if it will help to remove the darkness

Rabindranath Tagore
Whether joy or sorrow, pain or pleasure; whatsoever may befall thee, accept it serenely with an unvanquished heart.

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

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
He only has freedom who ideally loves freedom himself and is glad to extend it to others. He who cares to have slaves must chain himself to them. He who builds walls to create exclusion for others builds walls across his own freedom. He who distrusts freedom in others loses his moral right to it.

Rabindranath Tagore
Say of him what you please, but I know my child's failings. I do not love him because he is good, but because he is my little child. How should you know how dear he can be when you try to weigh his merits against his faults? When I must punish him he becomes all the more a part of my being. When I cause his tears to come my heart weeps with him. I alone have a right to blame and punish, for he only may chastise who loves.

Rabindranath Tagore
Yet what each one does is by no means of little moment. The grass has to put forth all its energy to draw sustenance from the uttermost tips of its rootlets simply to grow where it is as grass; it does not vainly strive to become a banyan tree; and so the earth gains a lovely carpet of green.

Rabindranath Tagore
We manage to swallow flesh only because we do not think of the cruel and sinful thing that we do. Cruelty... is a fundamental sin, and admits of no arguments or nice distinctions. If only we do not allow our heart to grow callous, it protests against cruelty, is always clearly heard; and yet we go on perpetrating cruelties easily, merrily, all of us - in fact, anyone who does not join in is dubbed a crank.

Rabindranath Tagore