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 greatest danger to our civilization is not war, but the loss of human sympathy.
The one thing that is truly divine is the human spirit.
The object of education is to give the mind a full command over its own powers.
The roots of the tree are down in the earth, but its branches reach up to the sky. So man is rooted in the earth, but his spirit reaches up to the heavens.
You can't cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
Reach high, for stars lie hidden in you. Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal.
The water in a vessel is sparkling; the water in the sea is dark. The small truth has words that are clear; the great truth has great silence.
He who is too busy doing good finds no time to be good.
The world is the ever-changing foam that floats on the surface of a sea of silence.
Facts are many, but the truth is one.
A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it.
By plucking her petals you do not gather the beauty of the flower.
The real friendship is like fluorescence, it shines better when everything has darkened.
The main object of teaching is not to give explanations, but to knock at the doors of the mind.
Music fills the infinite between two souls.
The burden of the self is lightened when I laugh at myself.
It is very simple to be happy, but it is very difficult to be simple.
The biggest changes in a women's nature are brought by love; in man, by ambition.
The greed for fruit misses the flower.
Contemporaries of Rabindranath Tagore
Other Literatures born within 50 years of Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941).