Rabindranath Tagore Quotes: 193 Best from Books

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Rabindranath Tagore Quotes
Home » Rabindranath Tagore Quotes: 193 Best from Books

Estimated reading time: 32 minutes

Before We Read Rabindranath Tagore Quotes we must know something about Sir Rabindranath Tagore. Rabindranath Tagore Jayanti is celebrated om 9th May every year. He is an icon of humanism and universalism who always privileged India’s argumentative traditions, remains a source of inspiration for humanity. However, Tagore’s social and political ideas appear to have received inadequate attention presumably because of the hegemonic influence of derivative Western ideas and thoughts. This is where Tagore stands out, not only as a poet but also a visionary who charted a course of action in tune with human betterment, cutting across all kinds of man-made barriers and customary restrictive social, economic and political practices.

Rabindranath Tagore Quotes From Stray Birds

Rabindranath Tagore Quotes
  1. God finds himself by creating.
  2. Cannot choose the best. The best chooses me.
  3. The stars are not afraid to appear like fireflies.
  4. Do not blame your food because you have no appetite.
  5. The road is lonely in its crowd for it is not loved.
  6. We read the world wrong and say that it deceives us.
  7. Life has become richer by the love that has been lost.
  8. The echo mocks her origin to prove she is the original.
  9. Her wistful face haunts my dreams like the rain at night.
  10. Let him only see the thorns who has eyes to see the rose.
  11. What you are you do not see, what you see is your shadow.
  12. Chastity is a wealth that comes from abundance of love.
  13. In death the many becomes one;in life the one becomes many.
  14. We come nearest to the great when we are great in humility.
  15. The sparrow is sorry for the peacock at the burden of its tail.
  16. God waits to win back his own flowers as gifts from man’s hands.
  17. If you shed tears when you miss the sun, you also miss the stars.
  18. By plucking her petals you do not gather the beauty of the flower.
  19. Man goes into the noisy crowd to drown his own clamour of silence.
  20. The mind, sharp but not broad, sticks at every point but does not move.
  21. I have my stars in the sky, but oh for my little lamp unlit in my house.
  22. The little flower lies in the dust. It sought the path of the butterfly.
  23. My heart is homesick to-day for the one sweet hour across the sea of time.
  24. The world has kissed my soul with its pain, asking for its return in songs.
  25. The roots below the earth claim no rewards for making the branches fruitful.
  26. The woodcutter’s axe begged for it’s handle from the tree. The tree gave it.
  27. Sit still my heart, do not raise your dust.let the world find its way to you.
  28. This longing is for the one who is felt in the dark, but not seen in the day.
  29. Sorrow is hushed into peace in my heart like the evening among the silent trees.
  30. The world loved man when he smiled. The world became afraid of him when he laughed.
  31. I have lost my dewdrop”, cries the flower to the morning sky that lost all its stars
  32. Maiden, your simplicity, like the blueness of the lake, reveals your depth of truth.
  33. Your idol is shattered in the dust to prove that god’s dust is greater than your idol.
  34. Once we dreamt that we were strangers.we wake up to find that we were dear to each other.
  35. These little thoughts are the rustle of leaves; they have their whisper of joy in my mind.
  36. Let me think that there is one among those stars that guides my life through the dark unknown.
  37. I cannot keep your waves,” says the bank to the river.”let me keep your footprints in my heart.
  38. If you shed tears when you miss the sun, you also miss the stars (illustrated): premium edition
  39. One sad voice has its nest among the ruins of the years.it sings to me in the night,–“i loved you.
  40. The world has opened its heart of light in the morning.come out, my heart, with thy love to meet it.
  41. Death belongs to life as birth does the walk is in the raising of thefoot as in the laying of it down
  42. I sit at my window this morning where the world like a passer-by stops for a moment, nods to me and goes.
  43. Let my thoughts come to you, when i am gone, like the afterglow of sunset at the margin of starry silence.
  44. Love! When you come with the burning lamp of pain in your hand, i can see your face and know you as bliss.
  45. Woman, when you move about in your household service your limbs sing like a hill stream among its pebbles.
  46. Your voice, my friend, wanders in my heart, like the muffled sound of the sea among these listening pines.
  47. Either you have work or you have not. When you have to say, “let us do something,” then begins mischief.
  48. The mighty desert is burning for the love of a blade of grass who shakes her head and laughs and flies away.
  49. Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.
  50. I cannot tell why this heart languishes in silence.it is for small needs it never asks, or knows or remembers.

Rabindranath Tagore Quotes From Gitanjali

Rabindranath Tagore Quotes
  1. The speech of my heart will be carried on in murmurings of a song.
  2. My useless life can only break out in tunes without a purpose.
  3. And because I love this life, I know I shall love death as well.
  4. He who has the knowledge has the responsibility to impart it to the students.
  5. There is no day nor night, nor form nor colour, and never, never a word.
  6. Ah, thou hast made my heart captive in the endless meshes of thy music, my master!
  7. When I go from hence, let this be my parting word, that what I have seen is unsurpassable.
  8. Oh my only friend, my best beloved, the gates are open in my house — do not pass by like a dream.
  9. Alas, why are my nights all thus lost? Ah, why do I ever miss his sight whose breath touches my sleep?
  10. Deliverance is not for me in renunciation. I feel the embrace of freedom in a thousand bonds of delight.
  11. At the immortal touch of thy hands my little heart loses its limits in joy and gives birth to utterance ineffable.
  12. India is there to unite all human races. Because of that reason in India we have not been given the unity of races.
  13. Though its colour be not deep and its smell be faint, use this flower in thy service and pluck it while there is time.
  14. Away from the sight of thy face my heart knows no rest nor respite, and my work becomes an endless toil in a shore less sea of toil.
  15. The question and the cry, “oh, where?” Melt into tears of a thousand streams and deluge the world with the flood of the assurance, “i am!
  16. Day by day thou art making me worthy of thy full acceptance by refusing me ever and anon, saving me from perils of weak, uncertain desire.
  17. My debts are large, my failures great, my shame secret and heavy; yet when I come to ask for my good, I quake in fear lest my prayer be granted.
  18. I shall ever try to drive all evils away from my heart and keep my love in flower, knowing that thou hast thy seat in the inmost shrine of my heart.
  19. Oh, dip my emptied life into that ocean, plunge it into the deepest fullness. let me for once feel that lost sweet touching the allness of the universe.
  20. Many an hour I have spent in the strife of the good and the evil, but now it is the pleasure of my playmate of the empty days to draw my heart on to him;
  21. Thou didst not turn in contempt from my childish play among dust, and the steps that I heard in my playroom are the same that are echoing from star to star.
  22. In pleasure and in pain I stand not by the side of men, and thus stand by thee. I shrink to give up my life, and thus do not plunge into the great waters of life.
  23. The light of thy music illumines the world. The life breath of thy music runs from sky to sky. The holy stream of thy music breaks through all stony obstacles and rushes on. My
  24. I surely know my pride will go to the wall, my life will burst its bonds in exceeding pain, and my empty heart will sob out in music like a hollow reed, and the stone will melt in tears.
  25. Mother, it is no gain, thy bondage of finery, if it keep one shut off from the healthful dust of the earth, if it rob one of the right of entrance to the great fair of common human life.
  26. Leave this chanting and singing and telling of beads! Whom dost thou worship in this lonely dark corner of a temple with doors all shut? Open thin eyes and see thy god is not before thee!
  27. 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.
  28. Thy desire at once puts out the light from the lamp it touches with its breath. It is unholy—take not thy gifts through its unclean hands. Accept only what is offered by sacred love.: revised edition of original version
  29. Day by day thou art making me worthy of the simple, great gifts that thou gavest to me unasked—this sky and the light, this body and the life and the mind—saving me from perils of overmuch desire.: revised edition of original version
  30. The shroud that covers me is a shroud of dust and death; I hate it, yet hug it in love. My debts are large, my failures great, my shame secret and heavy; yet when I come to ask for my good, I quake in fear lest my prayer be granted. He
  31. 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. This
  32. Light, oh where is the light! Kindle it with the burning fire of desire! It thunders and the wind rushes screaming through the void. The night is black as a black stone. Let not the hours pass by in the dark. Kindle the lamp of love with thy life.
  33. I came out alone on my way to my tryst. But who is this that follows me in the silent dark? I move aside to avoid his presence but I escape him not. He makes the dust rise from the earth with his swagger; he adds his loud voice to every word that I utter.
  34. I shall ever try to drive all evils away from my heart and keep my love in flower, knowing that thou hast thy seat in the inmost shrine of my heart. And it shall be my Endeavour to reveal thee in my actions, knowing it is thy power gives me strength to act.
  35. Come to the brink of eternity from which nothing can vanish—no hope, no happiness, no vision of a face seen through tears. Oh, dip my emptied life into that ocean, plunge it into the deepest fullness. Let me for once feel that lost sweet touch in the allness of the universe. Deity
  36. The traveler in the read-brown clothes that he wears that dust may not show upon him, the girl searching in her bed for the petals fallen from the wreath of her royal lover, the servant or the bride awaiting the master’s home-coming in the empty house, are images of the heart turning to god.
  37. He came and sat by my side but I woke not. What a cursed sleep it was, o miserable me! He came when the night was still; he had his harp in his hands, and my dreams became resonant with its melodies. Alas, why are my nights all thus lost? Ah, why do I ever miss his sight whose breath touches my sleep?
  38. In the night of weariness let me give myself up to sleep without struggle, resting my trust upon thee. Let me not force my flagging spirit into a poor preparation for thy worship. It is thou who rawest the veil of night upon the tired eyes of the day to renew its sight in a fresher gladness of awakening.
  39. I have had my invitation to this world’s festival, and thus my life has been blessed. My eyes have seen and my ears have heard. It was my part at this feast to play upon my instrument, and I have done all I could. Now, I ask, has the time come at last when I may go in and see thy face and offer thee my silent salutation?
  40. I came out alone on my way to my tryst. But who is this that follows me in the silent dark? I move aside to avoid his presence but I escape him not. He makes the dust rise from the earth with his swagger; he adds his loud voice to every word that I utter. He is my own little self, my lord, he knows no shame; but I am ashamed to come to thy door in his company.
  41. O fool, try to carry thyself upon thy own shoulders! O beggar, to come beg at thy own door! Leave all thy burdens on his hands who can bear all, and never look behind in regret. Thy desire at once puts out the light from the lamp it touches with its breath. It is unholy—take not thy gifts through its unclean hands. Accept only what is offered by sacred love.
  42. The time that my journey takes is long and the way of it long. I came out on the chariot of the first gleam of light, and pursued my voyage through the wildernesses of worlds leaving my track on many a star and planet. It is the most distant course that comes nearest to thyself, and that training is the most intricate which leads to the utter simplicity of a tune.
  43. On the day when death will knock at thy door what wilt thou offer to him? Oh, I will set before my guest the full vessel of my life—i will never let him go with empty hands. All the sweet vintage of all my autumn days and summer nights, all the earnings and gleanings of my busy life will I place before him at the close of my days when death will knock at my door.
  44. My song has put off her adornments. She has no pride of dress and decoration. Ornaments would mar our union; they would come between thee and me; their jingling would drown thy whispers. My poet’s vanity dies in shame before thy sight. O master poet, I have sat down at thy feet. Only let me make my life simple and straight, like a flute of reed for thee to fill with music.
  45. He whom I enclose with my name is weeping in this dungeon. I am ever busy building this wall all around; and as this wall goes up into the sky day by day I lose sight of my true being in its dark shadow. I take pride in this great wall, and I plaster it with dust and sand lest a least hole should be left in this name; and for all the care I take I lose sight of my true being.
  46. He whom I enclose with my name is weeping in this dungeon. I am ever busy building this wall all around; and as this wall goes up into the sky day by day I lose sight of my true being in its dark shadow. I take pride in this great wall, and I plaster it with dust and sand lest a least hole should be left in this name; and for all the care I take I lose sight of my true being.
  47. 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. My eyes strayed far and wide before I shut them and said, “here art thou!” The question and the cry, “oh, where?” Melt into tears of a thousand streams and deluge the world with the flood of the assurance, “i am!” Xiii
  48. He whom I enclose with my name is weeping in this dungeon. I am ever busy building this wall all around; and as this wall goes up into the sky day by day I lose sight of my true being in its dark shadow. I take pride in this great wall, and I plaster it with dust and sand lest a least hole should be left in this name; and for all the care I take I lose sight of my true being.
  49. Yes, I know, this is nothing but thy love, o beloved of my heart—this golden light that dances upon the leaves, these idle clouds sailing across the sky, this passing breeze leaving its coolness upon my forehead. The morning light has flooded my eyes—this is thy message to my heart. Thy face is bent from above, thy eyes look down on my eyes, and my heart has touched thy feet.
  50. I am here to sing thee songs. In this hall of thine I have a corner seat. In thy world I have no work to do; my useless life can only break out in tunes without a purpose. When the hour strikes for thy silent worship at the dark temple of midnight, command me, my master, to stand before thee to sing. When in the morning air the golden harp is tuned, honour me, commanding my presence.

Rabindranath Tagore Quotes from Nationalism

Rabindranath Tagore Quotes
  1. Her thrones were not her concern.
  2. Nation is the greatest evil for the nation,
  3. The world-flood has swept over our country,
  4. This abstract being, the nation, is ruling india.
  5. Clever lies become matters of self-congratulation.
  6. Catastrophes of nature whose traces are soon forgotten.
  7. Organization grows vaster, and selfishness attains supremacy.
  8. Political and the commercial man, the man of the limited purpose.
  9. For centuries new experiments have been made and adjustments carried out.
  10. It is a scientific product made in the political laboratory of the nation,
  11. Man’s history is being shaped according to the difficulties it encounters.
  12. It occupies more and more space in society, and at last becomes its ruling force.
  13. Brings in harvests of wealth, then it crosses its boundaries with amazing rapidity.
  14. Giving place to merely mechanical organization. But you see signs of it everywhere.
  15. That aspect which a whole population assumes when organized for a mechanical purpose.
  16. Man is driven to professionalism, producing wealth for himself and others, continually
  17. The personal man is eliminated to a phantom, everything becomes a revolution of policy
  18. The forces of the human heart become entangled among the forces of the human automaton,
  19. And the idea of the nation is one of the most powerful anesthetics that man has invented.
  20. For what are obstacles to the lower creatures are opportunities to the higher life of man.
  21. You have lost through habit consciousness that the living bonds of society are breaking up,
  22. It is our mission to face it and prove our humanity by dealing with it in the fullest truth.
  23. Nationalism is a cruel epidemic of evil that is sweeping over the human world of the present age,
  24. Turn a tree into a log and it will burn for you, but it will never bear living flowers and fruit.
  25. Obviously god made man to be human; but this modern product has such marvellous square-cut finish,
  26. For the elements which have lost their living bond of reality have lost the meaning of their existence.
  27. He has his responsibilities to the higher faculties of his nature, by ignoring which he may achieve success
  28. You cannot go on violating these laws in the name of your nation, yet enjoy their advantage as individuals.
  29. Their power till they are not only reasonably free from the tyranny of nature and human neighbours, but have
  30. Often she has crippled her children’s minds and narrowed their lives in order to fit them into her social forms;
  31. They can lead us on a certain path of policy and then pull us back again with the manipulation of office red tape;
  32. The creator will find it difficult to recognize it as a thing of spirit and a creature made in his own divine image.
  33. The india devoid of all politics, the india of no nations, whose one ambition has been to know this world as of soul,
  34. Greed of material prosperity, and consequent mutual jealousy, and by the fear of each other’s growth into powerfulness.
  35. Whenever power removes all checks from its path to make its career easy, it triumphantly rides into its ultimate crash of death.
  36. Neither the colourless vagueness of cosmopolitanism, nor the fierce self-idolatry of nation-worship, is the goal of human history.
  37. Their real freedom is not within the boundaries of security, but in the highroad of adventures, full of the risk of new experiences
  38. The time comes when it can stop no longer, for the competition grows keener, organization grows vaster, and selfishness attains supremacy.
  39. The truth is that the spirit of conflict and conquest is at the origin and in the centre of western nationalism; its basis is not social co-operation.
  40. But in India, our difficulties being internal, our history has been the history of continual social adjustment and not that of organized power for defense and aggression.
  41. When this organization of politics and commerce, whose other name is the nation, becomes all-powerful at the cost of the harmony of the higher social life, then it is an evil day for humanity
  42. Cruelly unjust both in their act and their thought, accompanied by a feeling that they are helping the world to receive its deserts; men who are honest can blindly go on robbing others of their
  43. The very psychology of men and women about their mutual relation is changing and becoming the psychology of the primitive fighting elements, rather than of humanity seeking its completeness through the union based upon mutual self-surrender.
  44. But there are ideals which do not play hide-and-seek with our life; they slowly grow from seed to flower, from flower to fruit; they require infinite space and heaven’s light to mature, and the fruits that they produce can survive years of insult and neglect.
  45. Yes, this is the logic of the nation. And it will never heed the voice of truth and goodness.it will go on in its ring-dance of moral corruption, linking steel unto steel, and machine unto machine; trampling under its tread all the sweet flowers of simple faith and the living ideals of man.
  46. I do not for a moment suggest that japan should be unmindful of acquiring modern weapons of self-protection. But this should never be allowed to go beyond her instinct of self-preservation. She must know that the real power is not in the weapons themselves, but in the man who wields those weapons
  47. I have felt that you have been able to assimilate these secrets into your life, and the truth which lies in the beauty of all things has passed into your souls. A mere knowledge of things can be had in a short enough time, but their spirit can only be acquired by centuries of training and self-control.
  48. Be not ashamed, my brothers, to stand before the proud and the powerful with your white robe of simpleness. Let your crown be of humility, your freedom the freedom of the soul. Build god’s throne daily upon the ample bareness of your poverty and know that what is huge is not great and pride is not everlasting.
  49. Even though from childhood i had been taught that idolatry of the nation is almost better than reverence for god and humanity, i believe i have outgrown that teaching, and it is my conviction that my countrymen will truly gain their india by fighting against the education which teaches them that a country is greater than the ideals of humanity.
  50. Take away man from his natural surroundings, from the fulness of his communal life, with all its living associations of beauty and love and social obligations, and you will be able to turn him into so many fragments of a machine for the production of wealth on a gigantic scale. Turn a tree into a log and it will burn for you, but it will never bear living flowers and fruit.

Rabindranath Tagore Quotes From The Fugitive

Rabindranath Tagore Quotes
  1. I hear the thundering flood tumbling my life from world to world and form to form, scattering my being in an endless spray of gifts, in sorrowings and songs.
  2. Be not concerned about her heart, my heart: be content if the music is true, though the words are not to be believed; enjoy the grace that dances like a lily on the rippling, deceiving surface, whatever may lie beneath.
  3. I thought I would write love’s words in their own colour; but that lies deep in the heart, and tears are pale. would you know them, friend, if the words were colourless? I thought I would sing love’s words to their own tune, but that sounds only in my heart, and my eyes are silent. would you know them, friend, if there were no tune?
  4. My songs are like bees; they follow through the air some fragrant trace — some memory — of you, to hum around your shyness, eager for its hidden store. when the freshness of dawn droops in the sun, when in the noon the air hangs low with heaviness and the forest is silent, my songs return home, their languid wings dusted with gold.
  5. We came hither together, friend, and now at the cross-roads I stop to bid you farewell. your path is wide and straight before you, but my call comes up by ways from the unknown. I shall follow wind and cloud; I shall follow the stars to where day breaks behind the hills; I shall follow lovers who, as they walk, twine their days into a wreath on a single threadof song, “i love.
  6. I am like the night to you, little flower’s can only give you peace and a wakeful silence hidden in the dark. when in the morning you open your eyes, I shall leave you to a world a-hum with bees, and songful with birds. my last gift to you will be a tear dropped into the depth of your youth; it will make your smile all the sweeter, and be mist your outlook on the pitiless mirth of day.
  7. In the evening after they have brought their cattle home, they sit on the grass before their huts to know that you are among them unseen, to repeat in their songs the name which they have fondly given you. while kings’ crowns shine and disappear like falling stars, around village huts your name rises through the still night from the simple hearts of your lovers whose names are unrecorded.
  8. In the night the song came to me; but you were not there.it found the words for which I had been seeking all day. Yes, in the stillness a moment after dark they throbbed into music, even as the stars then began to pulse with light; but you were not there. My hope was to sing it to you in the morning; but, try as I might, though the music came, the words hung back, when you were beside me.
  9. O that I were stored with a secret, like unshed rain in summer clouds — a secret, folded up in silence, that I could wander away with. o that I had someone to whisper to, where slow waters lap under trees that doze in the sun. the hush this evening seems to expect a footfall, and you ask me for the cause of my tears’ I cannot give a reason why I weep, for that is a secret still withheld from me.
  10. Eyes see only dust and earth, but feel with the heart, and know pure joy. the delights blossom on all sides in every form, but where is your heart’s thread to make a wreath of them? my master’s flute sounds through all things, drawing me out of my lodgings wherever they may be, and while I listen I know that every step I take is in my master’s house. for he is the sea, he is the river that leads to the sea, and he is the landing-place.
  11. I am the boat, you are the sea, and also the boatman. though you never make the shore, though you let me sink, why should I be foolish and afraid? is reaching the shore a greater prize than losing myself with you? if you are only the haven, as they say, then what is the sea? let it surge and toss me on its waves, I shall be content. I live in you whatever and however you appear. save me or kill me as you wish, only never leave me in other hands.
  12. For once be careless, timid traveller, and utterly lose your way; wide-awake though you are, be like broad daylight enticed by and netted in mist. do not shun the garden of lost hearts waiting at the end of the wrong road, where the grass is strewn with wrecked red flowers, and disconsolate water heaves in the troubled sea. long have you watched over the store gathered by weary years. Let it be stripped, with nothing remaining but the desolate triumph of losing all.
  13. Give me the supreme courage of love, this is my prayer — the courage to speak, to do, to suffer at thy will, to leave all things or be left alone. strengthen me on errands of danger, honour me with pain, and help me climb to that difficult mood which sacrifices daily to thee. give  me the supreme confidence of love, this is my prayer — the confidence that belongs to life in death, to victory in defeat, to the power hidden in frailest beauty, to that dignity in pain which accepts hurt but disdains to return it.
  14. My mind still buzzed with the cares of a busy day; I sat on without noting how twilight was deepening into dark. suddenly light stirred across the gloom and touched me as with a finger. I lifted my head and met the gaze of the full moon widened in wonder like a child’s. It held my eyes for long, and I felt as though a love-letter had been secretly dropped in at my window. and ever since my heart is breaking to write for answer something fragrant as night’s unseen flowers — great as her declaration spelt out in nameless stars.
  15. I have looked on this picture in many a month of march when the mustard is in bloom — this lazy line of the water and the grey of the sand beyond, the rough path along the river-bank carrying the comradeship of the field into the heart of the village. I have tried to capture in rhyme the idle whistle of the wind, the beat of the oar-strokes from a passing boat. I have wondered in my mind how simply it stands before me, this great world: with what fond and familiar ease it fills my heart, this encounter with the eternal stranger.

Rabindranath Tagore Quotes from short stories from Rabindranath Tagore books

Rabindranath Tagore Quotes
  1. Vanity is not like a horse or an elephant requiring expensive fodder.
  2. He wanted to go out into the open country and fill his lungs with fresh air.
  3. No king or emperor in the world had the power to keep captive this nonentity,
  4. A silent cry of the inmost heart for the mother, like the lowing of a calf in the twilight,—this
  5. The cramped atmosphere of neglect oppressed phatik so much that he felt that he could hardly breathe.
  6. The light of our home also was to depart to her husband’s house, and leave her father’s in the shadow.
  7. But the child’s faith never admits defeat, and it would snatch at the mantle of death itself to turn him back.
  8. At last, when no one else came, mother sleep soothed with her soft caresses the wounded heart of the motherless lad. Nilkanta
  9. When we express our thought in words, the medium is not found easily. There must be a process of translation, which is often inexact, and then we fall into error. But
  10. The lad himself becomes painfully self-conscious. When he talks with elderly people he is either unduly forward, or else so unduly shy that he appears ashamed of his very existence.
  11. These were autumn mornings, the very time of year when kings of old went forth to conquest; and i, never stirring from my little corner in calcutta, would let my mind wander over the whole world.
  12. They who from birth have had no other speech than the trembling of their lips learn a language of the eyes, endless in expression, deep as the sea, clear as the heavens, wherein play dawn and sunset, light and shadow.
  13. It was chilly weather. Through the window the rays of the sun touched my feet, and the slight warmth was very welcome. It was almost eight o’clock, and the early pedestrians were returning home with their heads covered.
  14. Perhaps the scenes of travel conjure themselves up before me and pass and repass in my imagination all the more vividly, because i lead such a vegetable existence that a call to travel would fall upon me like a thunder-bolt.
  15. We never cared for such useless things as knowledge. We only cared for truth. And our unsophisticated little hearts knew well where the crystal palace of truth lay and how to reach it. But to-day we are expected to write pages of facts, while the truth is simply this: “there was a king.
  16. At the very name of another country, my heart would go out to it, and at the sight of a foreigner in the streets, i would fall to weaving a network of dreams,—the mountains, the glens, and the forests of his distant home, with his cottage in its setting, and the free and independent life of far-away wilds.
  17. But here nature fulfilled her want of speech and spoke for her. The murmur of the brook, the voice of the village folk, the songs of the boatmen, the crying of the birds and rustle of trees mingled and were one with the trembling of her heart. They became one vast wave of sound which beat upon her restless soul.
  18. Raicharan was twelve years old when he came as a servant to his master’s house. He belonged to the same caste as his master and was given his master’s little son to nurse. As time went on the boy left raicharan’s arms to go to school. From school he went on to college, and after college he entered the judicial service. Always, until he married, raicharan was his sole attendant.
  19. Mother, the tutor has come, and i have such a bad headache; couldn’t i have no lessons to-day?” i hope no child of immature age will be allowed to read this story, and i sincerely trust it will not be used in text-books or primers for junior classes. For what i did was dreadfully bad, and i received no punishment whatever. On the contrary, my wickedness was crowned with success.
  20. Yet it is at this very age when, in his heart of hearts, a young lad most craves for recognition and love; and he becomes the devoted slave of any one who shows him consideration. But none dare openly love him, for that would be regarded as undue indulgence and therefore bad for the boy. So, what with scolding and chiding, he becomes very much like a stray dog that has lost his master.
  21. In this world of human affairs there is no worse nuisance than a boy at the age of fourteen. He is neither ornamental nor useful. It is impossible to shower affection on him as on a little boy; and he is always getting in the way. If he talks with a childish lisp he is called a baby, and if he answers in a grown-up way he is called impertinent. In fact any talk at all from him is resented.
  22. When we were young, we understood all sweet things; and we could detect the sweets of a fairy story by an unerring science of our own. We never cared for such useless things as knowledge. We only cared for truth. And our unsophisticated little hearts knew well where the crystal palace of truth lay and how to reach it. But to-day we are expected to write pages of facts, while the truth is simply this: “there was a king.
  23. Even if she could have got so far without a quarrel, still there would have been a great hue and cry about the marriage itself. First, it never happened. Secondly, how could there be a marriage between a princess of the warrior caste and a boy of the priestly brahman caste? Her readers would have imagined at once that the writer was preaching against our social customs in an underhand way. And they would write letters to the papers.
  24. When the goddess of fortune deserts a house, she usually leaves some of her burdens behind, and this ancient family was still encumbered with its host of dependents, though its own shelter was nearly crumbling to dust. These parasites take it to be an insult if they are asked to do any service. They get head-aches at the least touch of the kitchen smoke. They are visited with sudden rheumatism the moment they are asked to run errands.
  25. Alas for our foolish human nature! Its fond mistakes are persistent. The dictates of reason take a long time to assert their own sway. The surest proofs meanwhile are disbelieved. False hope is clung to with all one’s might and main, till a day comes when it has sucked the heart dry and it forcibly breaks through its bonds and departs. After that comes the misery of awakening, and then once again the longing to get back into the maze of the same mistakes.
  26. Black eyes need no translating; the mind itself throws a shadow upon them. In them thought opens or shuts, shines forth or goes out in darkness, hangs steadfast like the setting moon or like the swift and restless lightning illumines all quarters of the sky. They who from birth have had no other speech than the trembling of their lips learn a language of the eyes, endless in expression, deep as the sea, clear as the heavens, wherein play dawn and sunset, light and shadow. The
  27. But black eyes need no translating; the mind itself throws a shadow upon them. In them thought opens or shuts, shines forth or goes out in darkness, hangs steadfast like the setting moon or like the swift and restless lightning illumines all quarters of the sky. They who from birth have had no other speech than the trembling of their lips learn a language of the eyes, endless in expression, deep as the sea, clear as the heavens, wherein play dawn and sunset, light and shadow.
  28. But here nature fulfilled her want of speech and spoke fr her. The murmur of the brook, the voice of the village folk, the songs of the boatmen, the crying of the bird and the rustle of the trees mingled and were one with the trembling of her heart. They became one vast wave of sound which beat upon her restless soul. This murmur and movement of nature were dumb girl’s language; that speech of the dark eyes, which the long lushes shaded, was the language of the world about her.
Home » Rabindranath Tagore Quotes: 193 Best from Books

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