Rabindranath Tagore Quotations | Page 3

Men are cruel, but Man is kind.

True deliverance of man is the deliverance from Avidya i.e. ignorance. It is not in destroying anything that is positive and real, for that cannot be possible, but that which is negative, which obstructs our vision of truth.

April, like a child, Writes hieroglyphs on dust with flowers, Wipes them away and forgets.

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

Let my love like sunlight surround you and yet give you illumined freedom.

Joy is everywhere; it is in the earth's green covering of grass: in the blue serenity of the sky: in the reckless exuberance of spring: in the severe abstinence of grey winter: in the living flesh that animates our bodily frame: in the perfect poise of the human figure, noble and upright: in living, in the exercise of all our powers: in the acquisition of knowledge. . . Joy is there everywhere.

Compliments win friends, honesty loses them.

Merely to exist is not enough.

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.

If thou speakest not I will fill my heart with thy silence and endure it. I will keep still and wait like the night with starry vigil and its head bent low with patience. The morning will surely come, the darkness will vanish, and thy voice pour down in golden streams breaking through the sky. Then thy words will take wing in songs from every one of my birds' nests, and thy melodies will break forth in flowers in all my forest groves.

Not hammer-strokes, but dance of the water, sings the pebbles into perfection.

The movement of life has to rest in its own music.

I am able to love my God because He gives me freedom to deny Him.

Beauty is simply reality seen with the eyes of love

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.

When I go from hence, let this be my parting word, that what I have seen is unsurpassable. I have tasted of the hidden honey of this lotus that expands on the ocean of light, and thus I am blessed—let this be my parting word. In this playhouse of infinite forms I have had my play and here have I caught sight of him who is formless. My whole body and my limbs have thrilled with his touch who is beyond touch; and if the end comes here, let it come—let this be my parting word.

For every child that is born, it brings with it the hope that God is not yet disappointed with man.

In death the many become one; in life the one become many.

The weak can be terrible because they try furiously to appear strong.

The meaning of this is, that whomsoever we love, in him we find our own soul in the highest sense. The final truth of our existence lies in this. God, the Supreme Soul, is in me, as well as in my son, and my joy in my son is the realisation of this truth.

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

The best kind of wealth is to give up inordinate desires.

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

If life's journey be endless where is its goal? The answer is, it is everywhere. We are in a palace which has no end, but which we have reached. By exploring it and extending our relationship with it we are ever making it more and more our own.

Never be afraid of the moments--thus sings the voice of the everlasting.

You are invited to the festival of this world and your life is blessed.

You can't cross a sea by merely staring into the water.

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

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

It is the docile who achieve the most impossible things in this world.

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.

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.

Art awakens a sense of real by establishing an intimate relationship between our inner being and the universe at large, bringing us a consciousness of deep joy.

Be brave, right through, and leave for the unknown.

And because I love this life, I know I shall love death as well.

Great suffering brings with it the power of great endurance. When sorrow is deepest all the forces of patience and courage are banded together to do their duty. So while we are cowards before petty troubles, great sorrows make us brave by rousing our truer manhood.

A butterfly flitting from flower to flower ever remains mine, I lose the one that is netted by me.

I do not love him because he is good, but because he is my child.

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.

Dark clouds become heaven's flowers when kissed by light.

The world speaks to me in colors, my soul answers in music.

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

Our self (Soul), as a form of God's joy, is deathless. For his joy is amritham, eternal bliss. We know that the life of a Soul, which is finite in its expression and infinite in its principle, must go through the portals of death in its journey to realize the infinite.

I have read in books that we are called 'caged birds'. I cannot speak for others, but I had so much in this cage of mine that there was not room for it in the universe- at least that is what I then felt.

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.

You have given me Your love, filling the world with Your gifts.

The biggest changes in a women's nature are brought by love; in man, by ambition

Music is the purest form of art, and therefore the most direct expression of beauty, with a form and spirit which is one and simple, and least encumbered with anything extraneous. We seem to feel that the manifestation of the infinite in the finite forms of creation is music itself, silent and visible.

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.

Thy infinite gifts come to me only on these very small hands of mine. Ages pass, and still thou pourest, and still there is room to fill.

A lamp can only light another lamp when it continues to burn in its own flame.

The roots below the earth claim no rewards for making the branches fruitful.

The real frienship is like fluorescence, it shines better when everything has darken.

There is a moral law in this world which has its application both to individuals and organized bodies of men. You cannot go on violating these laws in the name of your nation, yet enjoy their advantage as individuals. We may forget truth for our conv

For man is by nature an artist.

Unless you have found God in your own soul, the whole world will seem meaningless to you.

I have listened And I have looked With open eyes. I have poured my soul Into the world Seeking the unknown Within the known. And I sing out loud In amazement.

Jewel-Like the immortaldoes not boast of its length of yearsbut of the scintillating point of the moment.

I thought that my voyage had come to its end at the last limit of my power, that the path before me was closed, that provisions were exhausted, and the time come to take shelter in a silent obscurity, but I find that thy will knows no end in me, and when old words die out on the tongue, new melodies break forth from the heart, and where the old tracks are lost, new country is revealed with its wonders.

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

The song I came to sing remains unsung to this day. I have spent my days in stringing and in unstringing my instrument. The time has not come true, the words have not been rightly set; only there is the agony of wishing in my heart….. I have not seen his face, nor have I listened to his voice; only I have heard his gentle footsteps from the road before my house….. But the lamp has not been lit and I cannot ask him into my house; I live in the hope of meeting with him; but this meeting is not yet.

Let not the hours pass by in the dark. Kindle the lamp of love with thy life.

We are like newborn children, Our power is the power to grow.

The night kissed the fading day With a whisper: "I am death, your mother, From me you will get new birth."

Long years ago, we made a tryst with destiny and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge... At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom.

Those who have everything but thee, my God, laugh at those who have nothing but thyself.

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.

Death's stamp gives value to the coin of life; making it possible to buy with life what is truly precious.

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times, in life after life, in age after age forever. He who wants to do good, knocks at the gate; He who loves, finds the door open.

I'm lost in the middle of my birthday. I want my friends, their touch, with the earth's last love. I will take life's final offering, I will take the last human blessing.

I believe in a spiritual world - not as anything separate from this world - but as its innermost truth. With the breath we draw we must always feel this truth, that we are living in God.

The infinite being has assumed unto himself the mystery of finitude. And in him who is love the finite and the infinite are made one.

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.

If religion, instead of being the manifestation of a spiritual ideal, gives prominence to scriptures and external rites, then does it disturb the peace more than anything else.

The Taj Mahal rises above the banks of the river like a solitary tear suspended on the cheek of time.

The tragedy of human life consists in our vain attempts to stretch the limits of things which can never become unlimited, to reach the infinite by absurdly adding to the rungs of the ladder of the finite.

Death is turning out the lamp because the dawn has appeared.

The progress of our soul is like a perfect poem. It has an infinite idea which, once realised, makes all movements full of meaning and joy.

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

We cannot look upon our lives as dreams of a dreamer who has no awakening in all time. We have a personality to which matter and force are unmeaning unless related to something infinitely personal, whose nature we have discovered, in some measure, in human love, in the greatness of the good, in the martyrdom of heroic souls, in the ineffable beauty of nature, which can never be a mere physical fact nor anything but an expression of personality.

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

Days are coloured bubbles that float upon the surface of fathomless nights.

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.

The greed of gain has no time or limit to its capaciousness. Its one object is to produce and consume. It has pity neither for beautiful nature nor for living human beings. It is ruthlessly ready without a moment's hesitation to crush beauty and life.

Night's darkness is the bag that bursts with the gold of the dawn.

The world has kissed my Soul with its pain, asking for its return in Songs.

No civilized society can thrive upon victims, whose humanity has been permanently mutilated.

The artist is the lover of nature; therefore he is her slave and her master.

We manage to swallow flesh, only because we do not think of the cruel and sinful thing we do.

The past is always with us, for nothing that once was time can ever depart.

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.

Love remains a secret even when spoken, for only a true lover truly knows that he is loved.

My fancies are fireflies Specks of living light twinkling in the dark.

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 for the patience to win my freedom.

Inspiration follows aspiration.

This little flute of a reed thou hast carried over hills and dales, and hast breathed through it melodies eternally new.

Time is a wealth of change, but the clock in its parody makes it mere change and no wealth.

Spurious fame spreads from tongue to tongue like the fog of the early dawn before the sun rises.

Where roads are made I lose my way.In the wide water, in the blue sky there is no line of a track.The pathway is hidden by the birds' wings, by the star-fires, by the flowers of the wayfaring seasons.And I ask my heart if its blood carries the wisdom of the unseen way.

Thou hast brought the distant near and made a brother of the stranger.