Rabindranath Tagore
First non-European Nobel Prize in Literature
Most quoted
"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."
— from Gitanjali, 1910
"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 dawn, and shall speed on my voyage through the wilderness of worlds, leaving my track on many a star and planet."
— from Gitanjali, 1910
"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."
— from Nationalism (lecture), 1917
All quotes by Rabindranath Tagore (270)
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.
The world is a song, and the soul is the singer.
The flower is not a flower until it is seen.
The true joy of a flower is in its giving itself away.
The stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.
The roots of a tree are not for its own nourishment, but for the nourishment of the whole forest.
The dust of the earth is my mother, and the sky is my father.
The night opens her flowers to lose them again in the morning.
The world is a cage, and the soul is the bird.
What is art? It is the response of the highest part of our nature to the highest part of reality.
The mind, in its desire for the infinite, creates the finite.
Truth can never be reached by argument.
The sleep of the flower is not a sleep of death, but a sleep of life.
The great truth is that we are not isolated beings, but part of a larger whole.
To be truly alive, one must be willing to die.
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high; Where knowledge is free...
The journey of life is not to arrive at a destination, but to experience the journey itself.
The heart of the earth is a silent song.
The finite is the breath of the infinite.
Contemporaries of Rabindranath Tagore
Other Literatures born within 50 years of Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941).