Rabindranath Tagore Quotations | Page 2

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

In the night we stumble over things and become acutely conscious of their separateness, but the day reveals the unity which embraces them. And the man whose inner vision is bathed in consciousness at once realizes the spiritual unity which reigns ove

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

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

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

The current of the world has its boundaries, otherwise it could have no existence, but its purpose is not shown in the boundaries which restrain it, but in its movement, which is toward perfection. The wonder is not that there should be obstacles and

The fountain of death makes the still waters of life play.

The emancipation of our physical nature is in attaining health, of our social being in attaining goodness, and of our self in attaining love.

The man whose acquaintance with the world does not lead him deeper than science leads him, will never understand what it is that the man with the spiritual vision finds in these natural phenomena. The water does not merely cleanse his limbs, but it p

The man who aims at his own aggrandisement underrates everything else.

All men have poetry in their hearts, and it is necessary for them, as much as possible, to express their feelings. For this they must have a medium, moving and pliant, which can refreshingly become their own, age after age. All great languages undergo change. Those languages which resist the spirit of change are doomed and will never produce great harvests of thought and literature. When forms become fixed, the spirit either weakly accepts its imprisonment or rebels. All revolutions consists of the "within" fighting against invasion from "without"... All great human movements are related to some great idea.

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

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

Beauty is in the ideal of perfect harmony which is in the universal being; truth the perfect comprehension of the universal mind. We individuals approach it through our own mistakes and blunders, through our accumulated experience, through our illumi

A mind all logic is like a knife all blade.

Life itself is a strange mixture. We have to take it as it is, try to understand it, and then to better it.

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high Where knowledge is free .....

While God waits for His temple to be built of love, men bring stones.

The earth paints a portrait of the sun at dawn with sunflowers in bloom. Unhappy with the portrait, she erases it and paints it again and again.

Go not to the temple to put flowers upon the feet of God, first fill your own house with the fragrance of love. Go not to the temple to light candles before the altar of God, first remove the darkness of sin from your heart. Go not to the temple to bow down your head in prayer, first learn to bow in humility before your fellow men. Go not to the temple to pray on bended knees, first bend down to lift someone who is down trodden. Go not to the temple to ask for forgiveness for your sins, first forgive from your heart those who have sinned against you.

It is very simple to be happy, but it is very difficult to be simple.

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

The greatest distance in this World is not that between living and death, it is when I am just before you, and you don't know that I Love You.

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

If you cry because the sun has gone out of your life, your tears will prevent you from seeing the stars.

The problem is not how to wipe out all differences, but how to unite with all differences intact.

The most important lesson that man can learn from life, is not that there is pain in this world, but that it is possible for him to transmute it into joy.

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

I've travelled all around the world to see the rivers and the mountains, and I've spent a lot of money. I have gone to great lengths, I have seen everything, but I forgot to see just outside my house a dewdrop on a little blade of grass, a dewdrop which reflects in its convexity the whole universe around you.

... let us unite, not in spite of our differences, but through them. For differences can never be wiped away, and life would be so much the poorer without them. Let all human races keep their own personalities, and yet come together, not in a uniformity that is dead, but in a unity that is living.

The false can never grow into truth by growing in power.

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.

Patriotism cannot be our final spiritual shelter; my refuge is humanity. I will not buy glass for the price of diamonds, and I will never allow patriotism to triumph over humanity as long as I live.

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.

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. Let me not look for allies in life's battlefield but to my own strength. Let me not crave in anxious fear to be saved but hope for the patience to win my freedom. Grant me that I may not be a coward, feeling your mercy in my success alone; but let me find the grasp of your hand in my failure.

Set the bird's wings with gold and it will never again soar in thesky.

And joy is everywhere; it is in the earth's green covering of grass; in the blue serenity of the sky.

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

Who are you, reader, reading my poems an hundred years hence? I cannot send you one single flower from this wealth of the spring, one single streak of gold from yonder clouds. Open your doors and look abroad. From your blossoming garden gather fragrant memories of the vanished flowers of an hundred years before. In the joy of your heart may you feel the living joy that sang one spring morning, sending its glad voice across a hundred years.

If someone smells a flower and says he does not understand, the reply to him is: there is nothing to understand, it is only a scent. If he persists, saying: that I know, but what does it all mean? Then one has either to change the subject, or make it more abstruse by saying that the scent is the shape which the universal joy takes in the flower.

Love's gift cannot be given, it waits to be accepted.

The Great Morning which is for all, rises in the East.

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.

Love gives beauty to everything it touches.

Love is when the soul starts to sing and the flowers of your life bloom on their own.

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....

The one who plants trees, knowing that he will never sit in their shade, has at least started to understand the meaning of life.

Wrong is wrong only when you are at liberty to choose.

My eyes have seen much, but they are not weary. My ears have heard much, but they thirst for more.

To find God, you must welcome everything.

Whatever we treasure for ourselves separates us from others; our possessions are our limitations.

Most people believe the mind to be a mirror, more or less accurately reflecting the world outside them, not realizing on the contrary that the mind is itself the principal element of creation.

The newer people of this modern age are more eager to amass than to realize.

We cross infinity with every step; we meet eternity in every second.

All that is not given is lost.

My dearest life, I know you are not mine forever; but do love me even if it’s for this moment. After that I shall vanish into the forest where you cast me, I won’t ask anyone for anything again. Give me something that can last me till I die.

The small wisdom is like water in a glass: clear, transparent, pure. The great wisdom is like the water in the sea: dark, mysterious, impenetrable.

Those who think to reach God by running away from the world, when and where do they expect to meet him? We are reaching him here in this very spot, now at this very moment.

Somewhere in the arrangement of this world there seems to be a great concern about giving us delight, which shows that, in the universe, over and above the meaning of matter and forces, there is a message conveyed through the magic touch of personality. ... Is it merely because the rose is round and pink that it gives me more satisfaction than the gold which could buy me the necessities of life, or any number of slaves. ... Somehow we feel that through a rose the language of love reached our hearts.

The stars are not afraid to appear like fireflies.

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

Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain but for the heart to conquer it.

The touch of an infinite mystery passes over the trivial and the familiar, making it break out into ineffable music... The trees, the stars, and the blue hills ache with a meaning which can never be uttered in words.

The flower fades and dies; but he who wears the flower has not to mourn for it for ever.

Love is an endless mystery, because there is no reasonable cause that could explain it.

Only in silence I find myself. Life in the city is so hectic that you lose the right perspective. It's important to know that our biggest resources are in our heart.

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high, where knowledge is free. Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls. Where words come out from the depth of truth, where tireless striving stretches its arms toward perfection. Where the clear stream of reason has not lost it's way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit. Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever widening thought and action. In to that heaven of freedom, my father, LET MY COUNTRY AWAKE!

Great calm, generous detachment, selfless love, disinterested effort: these are what make for success in life. If you can find peace in yourself and can spread comfort around you, you will be happier than an empress.

For many years, at great cost, I traveled through many countries, saw the high mountains, the oceans. The only things I did not see were the sparkling dewdrops in the grass just outside my door.

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

Do not linger to gather flowers to keep them, but walk on, for flowers will keep themselves blooming all your way.

Reach high, for stars lie hidden in you. Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal.

Once we dreamt that we were strangers. We wake up to find that we were dear to each other.

The more one lives alone on the river or in the open country, the clearer it becomes that nothing is more beautiful or great than to perform the ordinary duties of one's daily life simply and naturally.

We read the world wrong and say that it deceives us.

Overstraining is the enemy of accomplishment. Calm strength that arises from a deep and inexhaustible source is what brings success.

Music fills the infinite between two souls.

The main object of teaching is not to give explanations, but to knock at the doors of the mind.

When I stand before thee at the day's end, thou shalt see my scars and know that I had my wounds and also my healing.

Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark. In effect, the people who change our lives the most begin to sing to us while we are still in darkness. If we listen to their song, we will see the dawning of a new part of ourselves.

When the heart is hard and parched up, come upon me with a shower of mercy. When grace is lost from life, come with a burst of song. When tumultuous work raises its din on all sides shutting me out from beyond, come to me, my lord of silence, with thy peace and rest. When my beggarly heart sits crouched, shut up in a corner, break open the door, my king, and come with the ceremony of a king. When desire blinds the mind with delusion and dust, O thou holy one, thou wakeful, come with thy light and thy thunder.

And, indeed, what little of beauty and peace is to be found in the societies of men is owing to the daily performance of small duties, not to big doings and fine talk.

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.

The meaning of our self is not to be found in its separateness from God and others, but in the ceaseless realization of yoga, of union; not on the side of the canvas where it is blank, but on the side where the picture is being painted.

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

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

Children are living beings - more living than grown-up people who have built shells of habit around themselves. Therefore it is absolutely necessary for their mental health and development that they should not have mere schools for their lessons, but a world whose guiding spirit is personal love.

The fundamental desire of life is the desire to exist.

The same stream of life that runs through the world runs through my veins night and day.

It is in the very heart of our activity that we search for our goal.

The tyrant claims freedom to kill freedom, and yet keep it for himself.

Plant flowers in others' gardens and your life becomes a bouquet! Submitted by Lisa Letto, Coordinator, Nutrition Resource and Volunteer Centre, College of Pharmacy and Nutrition, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatchewan, Canada I slept and I dreamed that life is all joy, I woke and I saw that life is all service. I served and I saw that service is joy.

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!

Your love keeps me afloat but will remain the anchor in my soul... I don't really have words to describe how romantic I find that. Your love is what keeps me going, but it's also the anchor that keeps me close to you. I love it!

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

O Beauty, find thyself in love, not in the flattery of thy mirror.

If you want to know India, study Vivekananda. In him everything is positive and nothing negative.

Drunk with the joy of singing I forget myself and call thee friend who art my lord.

Man goes into the noisy crowd to drown his own clamor of silence.

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.