Rabindranath Tagore Quotes

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.

Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action-Into that heaven of freedom, my father, let my country awake.

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

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

Merely to exist is not enough.

Truth looks tawdry when she is overdressed.

Work, especially good work, becomes easy only when desire has learnt to discipline itself.

A message came from my youth of vanished days, saying, 'I wait for you among the quivering of unborn May, where smiles ripen for tears and hours ache with songs unsung.' It says, 'Come to me across the worn-out track of age, through the gates of death. For dreams fade, hopes fail, the fathered fruits of the year decay, but I am the eternal truth, and you shall meet me again and again in your voyage of life from shore to shore.

My Friend: Art thou abroad on this stormy night on thy journey of love, my friend? The sky groans like one in despair. I have no sleep tonight. Ever and again I open my door and look out on the darkness, my friend! I can see nothing before me. I wonder where lies thy path! By what dim shore of the ink-black river, by what far edge of the frowning forest, through what mazy depth of gloom art thou threading thy course to come to me, my friend?

Our scientific world is our world of reasoning. It has its greatness and uses and attractions. We are ready to pay homage due to it. But when it claims to have discovered the real world for us and laughs at the worlds of all simple-minded men, then we must say it is like a general grown intoxicated with his power, usurping the throne of his king

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

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

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.

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

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

The bird thinks it a favor to give the fish a lift in the air

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

when you came you cried and everybody smiled with joy; when you go smile and let the world cry for you.

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.

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

Who are you, a hundred years from today, reading my poetry with curiosity?

The potentiality of perfection outweighs actual contradictions... Existence in itself is here to prove that it cannot be an evil.

When I go from hence, let this be my parting word, that what I have seen is unsurpassable.

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.

In the mountain, stillness surges up to explore its own height In the lake, movement stands still to contemplate its own depth.

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

Age considers; youth ventures.

The child ever dwells in the mystery of ageless time,unobscured by the dust of history.

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

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

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

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

For man is by nature an artist.

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

It is no easy task to lead men. But it is easy enough to drive them.

Let my thoughts come to you, when I am gone, like the afterglow of sunset at the margin of starry silence.

If you shed tears when you miss the sun, you also miss the stars.

Love adorns itself; it seeks to prove inward joy by outward beauty

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

Everything has sprung from immortal life and is vibrating with life, for life is immense!

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

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.

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

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

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

Man's freedom is never in being saved from troubles, but it is the freedom to take trouble for his own good, to make the trouble an element in his joy.

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

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.

Perhaps the crescent moon smiles in doubt at being told that it is a fragment awaiting perfection.

The echo mocks her origin to prove she is the original.

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

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

Life's fulfillment finds constant obstacles in its path; but those are necessary for the sake of its advance. The stream is saved from the sluggishness of its current by the perpetual opposition of the soil through which it must cut its way. The spirit of fight belongs to the genius of life.

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

We manage to swallow flesh only because we do not think of the cruel and sinful thing that we do. There are many crimes which are the creation of man himself, the wrongfulness of which is put down to their divergence from habit, custom, or tradition. But cruelty is not of these. It is a fundamental sin, and admits of no argument or nice distinctions. If only we do not allow our heart to grow callous, its protest 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.

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

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

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

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

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