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 dignity of man is in his power to suffer.
The history of India is the history of a search for the truth, and not for power.
The best way to be happy is to make others happy.
The lamp of love that I light in my heart will never be extinguished.
The world is a stage, and we are all actors.
The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
The earth is a mother, and we are her children.
The song of the bird is the song of the soul.
The greatest tragedy is not death, but life without purpose.
The sun shines on the good and the bad, and the rain falls on the just and the unjust.
Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers, but to be fearless in facing them. Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain, but for the heart to conquer that pain.
Love does not claim possession, but gives freedom.
Death is not the opposite of life, but a part of it.
If you cry because the sun has gone out of your life, your tears will prevent you from seeing the stars.
Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark.
Everything comes to us that belongs to us if we create the capacity to receive it.
The world puts off its mask of vastness to its lover. It becomes small as one song, as one kiss of the eternal.
Born like a flower out of the dusty earth, still your color and your fragrance overwhelm the wide world.
I have become my own version of an optimist. If I can't make it through one door, I'll go through another door - or I'll make a door.
The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.
Contemporaries of Rabindranath Tagore
Other Literatures born within 50 years of Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941).