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 greed of gain has no time or limit to its capaciousness. Its one object is to produce and consume.
The highest truth is that God is love.
The world rushes on, and we are left behind, to dream of the past and to sigh for the future.
The tree is a living poem, and the poem is a living tree.
We come nearest to the great when we are great in humility.
Man's history is the history of his response to the challenge of the unknown.
The stars are not afraid to appear like fireflies.
Beauty is truth's smile when she is looking at her own face in a perfect mirror.
The dust of the earth is my bed, and the sky is my roof.
The true wealth of a nation lies not in its gold and silver but in its learning, wisdom and in the uprightness of its sons.
The night opens to the dawn, and the dawn opens to the day.
The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.
The highest form of worship is to serve man.
The song that I came to sing remains unsung to this day. I have spent my days in stringing and unstringing my instrument.
Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man.
The roots below the earth claim no rewards for making the branches fruitful.
The mind, in its desire for knowledge, is like a bird that flies from branch to branch, never resting.
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.
The great soul is the one who can live in the midst of the world, but is not of the world.
The mist, like love, plays upon the heart of the hills and brings out surprises of beauty.
Contemporaries of Rabindranath Tagore
Other Literatures born within 50 years of Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941).