Quotes & anectdotes from
the wise,
the foolish,
the courageous &
the drunk

Rabindranath Tagore Novelist

  • Gender: Male
  • Citizenship: India
  • Born: May 7, 1861
  • Died: Aug 7, 1941

Rabindranath Tagore, also written Rabīndranātha Thākura, sobriquet Gurudev, was a Bengali polymath who reshaped Bengali literature and music, as well as Indian art with Contextual Modernism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Author of Gitanjali and its "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse", he became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. In translation his poetry was viewed as spiritual and mercurial; however, his "elegant prose and magical poetry" remain largely unknown outside Bengal. Tagore introduced new prose and verse forms and the use of colloquial language into Bengali literature, thereby freeing it from traditional models based on classical Sanskrit. He was highly influential in introducing the best of Indian culture to the West and vice versa, and he is generally regarded as the outstanding creative artist of the modern Indian subcontinent, being highly commemorated in India and Bangladesh, as well as in Sri Lanka, Nepal and Pakistan.

A Pirali Brahmin from Kolkata with ancestral gentry roots in Jessore, Tagore wrote poetry as an eight-year-old.

Those who own much have much to fear.

Music fills the infinite between two souls.

What is Art? It is the response of man's creative soul to the call of the Real.

Age considers youth ventures.

Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man.

I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.

Love does not claim possession, but gives freedom.

Love is not a mere impulse, it must contain truth, which is law.

To be outspoken is easy when you do not wait to speak the complete truth.

Bigotry tries to keep truth safe in its hand with a grip that kills it.

Trees are the earth's endless effort to speak to the listening heaven.

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

The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.

Facts are many, but the truth is one.

Your idol is shattered in the dust to prove that God's dust is greater than your idol.

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

Gray hairs are signs of wisdom if you hold your tongue, speak and they are but hairs, as in the young.

Beauty is truth's smile when she beholds her own face in a perfect mirror.

We gain freedom when we have paid the full price.

The water in a vessel is sparkling the water in the sea is dark. The small truth has words which are clear the great truth has great silence.

Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark.

Depth of friendship does not depend on length of acquaintance.

We come nearest to the great when we are great in humility.

Don't limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time.

The highest education is that which does not merely give us information but makes our life in harmony with all existence.

By plucking her petals, you do not gather the beauty of the flower.

Love is an endless mystery, for it has nothing else to explain it.

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

From the solemn gloom of the temple children run out to sit in the dust, God watches them play and forgets the priest.

Emancipation from the bondage of the soil is no freedom for the tree.

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

Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.

In Art, man reveals himself and not his objects.

Do not say, 'It is morning,' and dismiss it with a name of yesterday. See it for the first time as a newborn child that has no name.

Love is the only reality and it is not a mere sentiment. It is the ultimate truth that lies at the heart of creation.