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. It has pity neither for beautiful nature nor for living human beings.
The world is a grand opera of which we are the audience and the actors.
The traveler has to knock at every alien door to come to his own, and one has to wander through all the outer worlds to reach the innermost shrine at the end.
Power said to the world, 'You are mine.' The world kept it prisoner on her throne. Love said to the world, 'I am thine.' The world gave it the freedom of her house.
The highest truth is that we are not merely to be tolerated, but to be loved.
Trees are the earth's endless effort to speak to the listening heaven.
The true man is one who is not afraid to be alone.
Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers, but to be fearless in facing them.
The night opens to the dawn to show us that light is not lost.
The dignity of man is in his ability to choose.
The world is not a mere sum of things, but a harmony of relations.
Life's errors are not fatal, for a wise man learns from his mistakes.
The mind, in its desire for truth, is like a bird that flies from branch to branch, seeking the ripest fruit.
The object of education is to give the mind a complete mastery over its own powers.
The highest form of worship is to serve mankind.
The greatest truths are the simplest, and so are the greatest men.
The song I came to sing remains unsung to this day. I have spent my days in stringing and unstringing my instrument.
My heart, the bird of the wilderness, has found its sky in your eyes.
I have dipped my hands in the world's pain and found a new joy.
The flower is not a flower, it is a smile of the sun.
Contemporaries of Rabindranath Tagore
Other Literatures born within 50 years of Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941).