Rabindranath Tagore was a Nobel Prize-winning poet and made notable contributions to literature as a dramatist, novelist, short story writer, etc. He also played a leading role in Indian cultural renaissance and came to be recognised as one of the architects of modern India. He was born on 7 May, 1861 to Debendranath Tagore and Sarada Devi in Calcutta, Bengal Presidency, British India (present-day Kolkata, West Bengal, India).
Among his siblings, he was the youngest. He lost his mother when he was very young and his father travelled a lot. Therefore, Tagore was raised by servants. He died on 7 August, 1941 in Calcutta (present-day Kolkata). Today is his death anniversary. Some quotes by Rabindranath Tagore are given below:
Rabindranath Tagore: Famous Quotes
1. "You cannot cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water."
2. "Trees are the earth's endless effort to speak to the listening heaven."
3. "Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark."
4. “If you cry because the sun has gone out of your life, your tears will prevent you from seeing the stars.”
5. “I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.”
6. “It is very simple to be happy, but it is very difficult to be simple.”
7. “The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.”
8. “Reach high, for stars lie hidden in you. Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal.”
9. “I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times, in life after life, in age after age forever.”
10. "If you shut the door to all errors, truth will be shut out."
11. "Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come."
12. “You smiled and talked to me of nothing and I felt that for this I had been waiting long.”
13. “We read the world wrong and say that it deceives us.”
14. “Love is an endless mystery, because there is no reasonable cause that could explain it.”
15. “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. ”
16. “Music fills the infinite between two souls."
17. “I have spent many days stringing and unstringing my instrument while the song I came to sing remains unsung.”
18. “Let my thoughts come to you, when I am gone, like the afterglow of sunset at the margin of starry silence.”
19. "A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it."
20. "Everything comes to us that belongs to us if we create the capacity to receive it."
Rabindranath Tagore: Poems
1. 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?
2. On the nature of love
The night is black and the forest has no end;
a million people thread it in a million ways.
We have trysts to keep in the darkness, but where
or with whom - of that we are unaware.
But we have this faith - that a lifetime's bliss
will appear any minute, with a smile upon its lips.
Scents, touches, sounds, snatches of songs
brush us, pass us, give us delightful shocks.
Then peradventure there's a flash of lightning:
whomever I see that instant I fall in love with.
I call that person and cry: `This life is blest!
for your sake such miles have I traversed!'
All those others who came close and moved off
in the darkness - I don't know if they exist or not.
3. Gitanjali
Thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure.
This frail vessel thou emptiest again and again, and fillest it ever with fresh life.
This little flute of a reed thou hast carried over hills and dales, and hast breathed through it melodies eternally new.
At the immortal touch of thy hands my little heart loses its limits in joy and gives birth to utterance ineffable.
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.
4. Waiting
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.
5. Where the mind is without Fear
Where the mind is without Fear
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 towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
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.
6.
On the day when the lotus bloomed, alas, my mind was straying, and I knew it not. My basket was empty and the flower remained unheeded.
Only now and again a sadness fell upon me, and I started up from my dream and felt a sweet trace of a strange smell in the south wind.
That vague fragrance made my heart ache with longing, and it seemed to me that it was the eager breath of the summer seeking for its completion.
I knew not then that it was so near, that it was mine, and this perfect sweetness had blossomed in the depth of my own heart.
7. Endless Time
Time is endless in thy hands, my lord.
There is none to count thy minutes.
Days and nights pass and ages bloom and fade like flowers.
Thou knowest how to wait.
Thy centuries follow each other perfecting a small wild flower.
We have no time to lose,
and having no time we must scramble for a chance.
We are too poor to be late.
And thus it is that time goes by
while I give it to every querulous man who claims it,
and thine altar is empty of all offerings to the last.
At the end of the day I hasten in fear lest thy gate be shut;
but I find that yet there is time.
On Missing a Dear One
let me not forget.
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