Rabindranath Tagore Quotes

267 Sourced Quotes

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
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
That side of our existence whose direction is towards the infinite seeks not wealth, but freedom and joy. There the reign of necessity ceases, and there our function is not to get but to be. To be what? To be one with Brahma. For the region of the infinite is the region of unity. Therefore the Upanishads say: If man apprehends God he becomes true. Here it is becoming, it is not having more. Words do no gather bulk when you know their meaning; they become true by being one with the idea.

Rabindranath Tagore
Reason tells us that creation never can be perfectly happy. So long as it is incomplete it must put up with imperfection and sorrow. It can only be perfect when it ceases to be creation, and is God. Do our prayers dare go so far?

Rabindranath Tagore
Ah me, why did they build my house by the road to the market town?

Rabindranath Tagore
The hours trip rapidly away, hiding their dreams in their skirts.

Rabindranath Tagore
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.

Rabindranath Tagore
My heart, the bird of the wilderness, has found its sky in your eyes.

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

Rabindranath Tagore
At my dying hour, and over my long life,
A clock strikes somewhere at the city's edge.

Rabindranath Tagore
Let life be beautiful like summer flowers and death like autumn leaves.

Rabindranath Tagore
The traveler 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.

Rabindranath Tagore
That which is eternal within the moment only becomes shallow if spread out in time.

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
Only those of tranquil minds, and none else, can attain abiding joy, by realizing within their souls the Being who manifests one essence in a multiplicity of forms.

Rabindranath Tagore
Bees sip honey from flowers and hum their thanks when they leave. The gaudy butterfly is sure that the flowers owe thanks to him.

Rabindranath Tagore
The smile that flickers on baby's lips when he sleeps — does anybody know where it was born? 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 in the dream of a dew-washed morning.

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 into numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.

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