Rabindranath Tagore - Man Quotes

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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
The birds looked upon me as nothing but a man, quite a trifling creature without wings-and they would have nothing to do with me. Were it not so I would build a small cabin for myself among their crowd of nests and pass my days counting the sea waves.

Rabindranath Tagore
Whatever character our theology may ascribe to him, in reality God is the infinite ideal of Man, towards whom men move in their collective growth, with whom they seek their union of love as individuals, in whom they find their ideal of father, friend and beloved.

Rabindranath Tagore
The higher nature in man always seeks for something which transcends itself and yet is its deepest truth; which claims all its sacrifice, yet makes this sacrifice its own recompense. This is man's dharma, man's religion, and man's self is the vessel.

Rabindranath Tagore
The pious sectarian is proud because he is confident of his right of possession in God. The man of devotion is meek because he is conscious of God's right of love over his life and soul.

Rabindranath Tagore
When our universe is in harmony with man, the eternal, we know it as truth, we feel it as beauty.

Rabindranath Tagore
Man's abiding happiness is not in getting anything but in giving himself up to what is greater than himself, to ideas which are larger than his individual life, the idea of his country, of humanity, of God.

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

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

Rabindranath Tagore
Man goes into the noisy crowd to drown his own clamour of silence.

Rabindranath Tagore
Man discovers his own wealth when God comes to ask gifts of him.

Rabindranath Tagore
Man is not entirely an animal. He aspires to a spiritual vision, which is the vision of the whole truth. This gives him the highest delight, because it reveals to him the deepest harmony that exists between him and his surroundings. It is our desires that limit the scope of our self-realisation, hinder our extension of consciousness, and give rise to sin, which is the innermost barrier that keeps us apart from our God, setting up disunion and the arrogance of exclusiveness. For sin is not one mere action, but it is an attitude of life which takes for granted that our goal is finite, that our self is the ultimate truth, and that we are not all essentially one but exist each for his own separate individual existence.

Rabindranath Tagore
Of course man is useful to man, because his body is a marvellous machine and his mind an organ of wonderful efficiency. But he is a spirit as well, and this spirit is truly known only by love. When we define a man by the market value of the service we can expect of him, we know him imperfectly. With this limited knowledge of him it becomes easy for us to be unjust to him and to entertain feelings of triumphant self-congratulation when, on account of some cruel advantage on our side, we can get out of him much more than we have paid for. But when we know him as a spirit we know him as our own. We at once feel that cruelty to him is cruelty to ourselves, to make him small is stealing from our own humanity...

Rabindranath Tagore
Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man.

Rabindranath Tagore
We try to realize the essential unity of the world with the conscious soul of man; we learn to perceive the unity held together by the one Eternal Spirit, whose power creates the earth, the sky, and the stars, and at the same time irradiates our mind.

Rabindranath Tagore
God waits to win back his own flowers as gifts from man's hands.

Rabindranath Tagore
This is the ultimate end of man, to find the One which is in him; which is his truth, which is his soul; the key with which he opens the gate of the spiritual life, the heavenly kingdom.

Rabindranath Tagore
Man is immortal; therefore he must die endlessly. For life is a creative idea; it can only find itself in changing forms

Rabindranath Tagore
Perhaps the new dawn will come from this horizon, from the East where the sun rises; and then, unvanquished Man will retrace his path of conquest, despite all barriers, to win back his lost heritage.

Rabindranath Tagore
All the great utterances of man have to be judged not by the letter but by the spirit — the spirit which unfolds itself with the growth of life in history.

Rabindranath Tagore