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)
Man's history is the history of his consciousness.
The highest truth is that we are all one.
The world is full of things that are beautiful, but only a few that are true.
The purpose of art is to reveal the soul of the universe.
The path to truth is through love.
Life is a constant flow, a perpetual becoming.
The soul is not a thing, but a process.
The universe is a vast symphony, and we are its instruments.
The greatest freedom is to be free from oneself.
The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.
The world is a mirror, reflecting back to us what we are.
The end of life is not to be happy, but to be useful.
I have seen the face of the unholy, the unbeautiful, the unloving, and I have known that it is not the ultimate truth.
The man who is a true lover of his country will be a lover of mankind.
The greedy man who is fond of his religion is a greater danger to his religion than the man who is an atheist.
We gain freedom when we have paid the full price for our right to live without being a burden on others.
The modern age has brought forth a new type of man, who is not a slave of tradition but a master of his own destiny.
The true India is not to be found in any book, but in the hearts of its people.
The highest truth is that which is not only true but also beautiful.
The child is a living poem, and the parent is the poet.
Contemporaries of Rabindranath Tagore
Other Literatures born within 50 years of Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941).