Rabindranath Tagore Quotations

You can't cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.

Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark.

The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.

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

Everything comes to us that belongs to us if we create the capacity to receive it.

Let us not pray to be sheltered from dangers but to be fearless when facing them.

Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.

Beauty is truth's smile when she beholds her own face in a perfect mirror.

Don't limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time.

Do not say, 'It is morning,' and dismiss it with a name of yesterday. See it for the first time as a newborn child that has no name.

Depth of friendship does not depend on length of acquaintance.

I have become my own version of an optimist. 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.

The highest education is that which does not merely give us information but makes our life in harmony with all existence.

In Art, man reveals himself and not his objects.

The flower which is single need not envy the thorns that are numerous.

By plucking her petals, you do not gather the beauty of the flower.

Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.

We live in the world when we love it.

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

Life is given to us, we earn it by giving it.

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

To be outspoken is easy when you do not wait to speak the complete truth.

We gain freedom when we have paid the full price.

Facts are many, but the truth is one.

Love is an endless mystery, for it has nothing else to explain it.

Love is the only reality and it is not a mere sentiment. It is the ultimate truth that lies at the heart of creation.

Love does not claim possession, but gives freedom.

He who is too busy doing good finds no time to be good.

Trees are Earth's endless effort to speak to the listening heaven.

I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.

From the solemn gloom of the temple children run out to sit in the dust, God watches them play and forgets the priest.

Emancipation from the bondage of the soil is no freedom for the tree.

Gray hairs are signs of wisdom if you hold your tongue, speak and they are but hairs, as in the young.

We come nearest to the great when we are great in humility.

Trees are the earth's endless effort to speak to the listening heaven.

Your idol is shattered in the dust to prove that God's dust is greater than your idol.

Nirvana is not the blowing out of the candle. It is the extinguishing of the flame because day is come.

The water in a vessel is sparkling; the water in the sea is dark. The small truth has words which are clear; the great truth has great silence.

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

Bigotry tries to keep truth safe in its hand with a grip that kills it.

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

Those who own much have much to fear.

If you shut the door to all errors, truth will be shut out.

The burden of the self is lightened with I laugh at myself.

We believe that mere movement is life, and that the more velocity it has, the more it expresses vitality.

When I bring you colored toys, my child, I understand why there is such a play of colors on clouds, on water, and why flowers are painted in tints

Man has a fund of emotional energy which is not all occupied with his self-preservation. This surplus seeks its outlet in the creation of art, for man's civilization is built upon his surplus... In everyday life, when we are mostly moved by our habit

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

Love gives beauty to everything it touches. Not greed and utility; they produce offices, but not dwelling houses. To be able to love material things, to clothe them with tender grace, and yet not be attached to them, this is a great service. Providen

Music is the purest form of art... therefore true poets, they who are seers, seek to express the universe in terms of music... The singer has everything within him. The notes come out from his very life. They are not materials gathered from outside.

Never be afraid of the moments - thus sings the voice of the ever-lasting.

Obstacles are necessary companions to expression, and we know that the positive element in language is not in its obstructiveness. Exclusively viewed from the side of the obstacle, nature appears inimical to the idea of morality. But if that were abs

Objects of knowledge maintain an infinite distance from us who are the knowers. For knowledge is not union. Therefore the further world of freedom awaits us there where we reach truth, not through feeling it by senses or knowing it by reason, but thr

I believe that there is an ideal hovering over the earth, an ideal of that Paradise which is not the mere outcome of imagination, but the ultimate reality towards which all things are moving. I believe that this vision of Paradise is to be seen in th

I have spent my days stringing and unstringing my instrument while the song I came to sing remains unsung.

If I say that He is within me, the universe is ashamed; if I say that He is without me, it is falsehood.

He who wants to do good knocks at the gate; he who loves finds the gate open.

He is neither manifest nor hidden, He is neither revealed nor unrevealed: there are no words to tell that which He is. He is without form, without quality, without decay.

We can make truth ours by actively modulating its inter-relations. This is the work of art; for reality is not based in the substance of things but in the principle of relationship. Truth is the infinite pursued by metaphysics; fact is the infinite p

We can look upon a road from two different points of view. One regards it as dividing us from the object of desire; in that case we count every step of our journey over it as something attained by force in the face of obstruction. The other sees it a

God seeks comrades and claims love, the Devil seeksslaves and claims obedience.

God respects me when I work, but He loves me when I sing.

Gross utility kills beauty. We now have all over the world huge production of things, huge organizations, huge administrations of empire - all obstructing the path of life. Civilization is waiting for a great consummation, for an expression of its so

It is our desires that limit the scope of our self-realization, 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 arrogance of exclusiveness. For sin

Languages are jealous sovereigns, and passports are rarely allowed for travelers to cross their strictly guarded borders

Our nature is obscured by work done by the compulsion of want or fear. The mother reveals herself in the service of her children, so our true freedom is not the freedom from action but freedom in action, which can only be attained in the work of love.

Some have thought deeply and explored the meaning of thy truth, and they are great; I have listened to catch the music of thy play, and I am glad

Nationality is respectable only when it is on the defense, when it is waging wars of liberation it is sacred; when those of domination it is accursed.

Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers, but to be fearless in facing them. Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain, but for the heart to conquer it.

Man's cry is to reach his fullest expression.

We live in this world when we love it.

We could have no communication whatever with our surroundings if they were absolutely foreign to us. Man is reaping success every day, and that shows there is a rational connection between him and nature, for we never can make anything our own except

Those institutions which are static in their nature raise walls of division; this is why, in the history of religions, priesthood has always maintained dissensions and hindered the freedom of man. But the principle of life unites, it deals with the v

The picture of a flower in a botanical book is information; its mission ends with our knowledge. But in pure art it is a personal communication. And therefore until it finds its harmony in the depth of our personality it misses the mark. We can treat

When we rejoice in our fullness, then we can part with out fruits with joy.

Want of love is a degree of callousness; for love is the perfection of consciousness. We do not love because we do not comprehend, or rather we do not comprehend because we do not love. For love is the ultimate meaning of everything around us. It is

To understand anything is to find in it something which is our own, and it is the discovery of ourselves outside us which makes us glad. This relation of understanding is partial, but the relation of love is complete. In love the sense of difference

There are men whose idea of life is tactic, who long for its continuation after death only because of their wish for permanence and not perfection; they love to imagine that the things to which they are accustomed will persist for ever. They complete

Truth cannot afford to be tolerant where it faces positive evil.

The progress of our soul is like a perfect poem. It has an infinite idea which once realized makes all movements full of meaning and joy. But if we detach its movements from that ultimate idea, if we do not see the infinite rest and only see the infi

The question why there is evil in existence is the same as why there is imperfection... But this is the real question we ought to ask: Is this imperfection the final truth, is evil absolute and ultimate?

Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark.

We gain freedom when we have paid the full price for our right to live.

We do not raise our hands to the void for things beyond hope.

Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of humanity.

The revilement of the infinite in the finite, which is the motive of all creation, is not seen in its perfection in the starry heavens, in the beauty of the flowers. It is in the soul of man.

The traveler has to knock at every alien door to come to his own, and he has to wonder through all the outer worlds to reach the innermost shrine at the end.

Things are distinct not in their essence but in their appearance; in other words, in their relation to one to whom they appear. This is art, the truth of which is not in substance or logic, but in expression. Abstract truth may belong to science and

The smile that flickers on baby's lips when he sleeps- does anybody know where it was borne? 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 . . . .

The tendency in modern civilization is to make the world uniform... Let the mind be universal. The individual should not be sacrificed.

So our daily worship of God is not really the process of gradual acquisition of him, but the daily process of surrendering ourselves, removing all obstacles to union and extending our consciousness of him in devotion and service, in goodness and in l

Science urges us to occupy by our mind the immensity of the knowable world; our spiritual teacher enjoins us to comprehend by our soul the infinite spirit which is in the depth of the moving and changing facts of the world; the urging of our artistic

The most important lesson that man can learn from his life is not that there is pain in this world, but that it depends upon him to turn it into good account, that it is possible for him to transmute it into joy... Man's freedom is never in being sav

The burden of self is lightened when I laugh at myself.

Your mission is proving that a love for the earth, and for the things of the earth, is possible without materialism, a love without greed... I entreat you not to be turned by the call of vulgar strength, of stupendous size, by the spirit of storage,

The object of education is to give man the unity of truth. Formerly, when life was simple, all the different elements of man were in complete harmony. But when there came the separation of the intellect from the spiritual and the physical, the school

The best of us still have our aspirations for the supreme goals of life, which is so often mocked by prosperous people who now control the world. We still believe that the world has a deeper meaning than what is apparent, and that therein the human s

Taking shelter in the dead is death itself, and only taking all the risk of life to the fullest extent is living.

India chose her places of pilgrimages on the top of hills and mountains, by the side of the holy rivers, in the heart of forests and by the shores of the ocean, which along with the sky, is our nearest visible symbol of the vast, the boundless, the i

In love, at one of its poles you find the personal, at the other the impersonal. At one you have the positive assertion - Here I am; at the other the equally strong denial - I am not. Without this ego what is love? And again, with only this ego how c