Rabindranath Tagore Quotes

267 Sourced Quotes

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
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
Let this be my last word, that I trust in thy love.

Rabindranath Tagore
Oh my only friend, my best beloved, the gates are open in my house—do not pass by like a dream.

Rabindranath Tagore
Languages are jealous sovereigns, and passports are rarely allowed for travellers to cross their strictly guarded borders.

Rabindranath Tagore
Whatever we understand and enjoy in human products instantly becomes ours, wherever they might have their origin... Let me feel with unalloyed gladness that all the great glories of man are mine.

Rabindranath Tagore
A teacher can never truly teach unless he is still learning himself. A lamp can never light another lamp unless it continues to burn its own flame. The teacher who has come to the end of his subject, who has no living traffic with his knowledge but merely repeats his lesson to his students, can only load their minds, he cannot quicken them....

Rabindranath Tagore
By plucking her petals you do not gather the beauty of the flower

Rabindranath Tagore
The singer alone does not make a song, there has to be someone who hears. -Broken Song

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

Rabindranath Tagore
Let my doing nothing when I have nothing to do, become untroubled in its depth of peace, like the evening in the seashore when the water is silent.

Rabindranath Tagore
The light of the stars travels millions of miles to reach the earth, but it cannot reach our hearts - so many millions of miles further off are we!

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
My heart today smiles at its past night of tears
like a wet tree glistening in the sun
after the rain is over.

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

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

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

Rabindranath Tagore
Love is not a mere impulse, it must contain truth, which is law.

Rabindranath Tagore
The water vessel, taken as a vessel only, raises the question, "Why does it exist at all?" Through its fitness of construction, it offers the apology for its existence. But where it is a work of beauty it has no question to answer; it has nothing to do, but to be.

Rabindranath Tagore
Ah, thou hast made my heart captive in the endless meshes of thy music, my master!

Rabindranath Tagore