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)
In art, man reveals himself and not his objects.
Life is given to us, we earn it by giving it.
Power takes as ingratitude the writhing of its victims.
Let us not pray to be sheltered from dangers but to be fearless when facing them.
The truth comes as conqueror only because we have lost the art of receiving it as guest.
Patriotism cannot be our final spiritual shelter; my refuge is humanity.
The most important lesson that man can learn from life, is not that there is pain in this world, but that it is possible for him to transmute it into joy.
We gain freedom when we have paid the full price for our right to live.
The touch of an infinite mystery passes over the trivial and the familiar, making it break out into ineffable music.
Love is the only reality and it is not a mere sentiment. It is the ultimate truth that lies at the heart of creation.
Contemporaries of Rabindranath Tagore
Other Literatures born within 50 years of Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941).