Thoughts by Rabindranath Tagore Quotes in English Quotations

But here Nature fulfilled her want of speech and spoke for her. The murmur of the brook, the voice of the village folk, the songs of the boatmen, the crying of the birds and rustle of trees mingled and were one with the trembling of her heart. They became one vast wave of sound which beat upon her restless soul.

These days my sole desire is that our lives should be simple and straightforward, that all around us there should be peace and cheerfulness, that our way of life should be unostentatious and full of bounty, that our needs should be small and our aims high and our efforts unselfish and our work for others more important than our work for ourselves.

Today I feel that I shall win through. I have come to the gateway of the simple; I am now content to see things as they are. I have gained freedom myself; I shall allow freedom to others. In my work will be my salvation.

Most people believe the mind to be a mirror, more or less accurately reflecting the world outside them, not realizing on the contrary that the mind is itself the principal element of creation.

Those who draw their sustenance from science are blessed. It is for me to only derive an occasional pleasure. This is nothing worthy of conceit, but I am indeed touched by the joys. This book is an ode to such joys, a digest of my collections from various sources.

One clings desperately to some vain hope, till a day comes when it has sucked the heart dry and then it breaks through its bonds and departs. After that comes the misery of awakening, and then once again the longing to get back into the maze of the same mistakes.

I remember I once told him: 'Women's minds are so petty, so crooked!' 'Like the feet of Chinese women,' he replied. 'Has not the pressure of society cramped them into pettiness and crookedness? They are but pawns of the fate which gambles with them. What responsibility have they of their own?

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.

The smile that flickers on a baby’s lips when he sleeps- does anyone know where it was born? Yes, there is a rumor that a young pale beam of a crescent moon touched the edge of a vanishing autumn cloud, and there the smile was first born in the dream of a dew-washed morning.

All my work and all my dealings with people feel very easy. Actually, everything is simple. There is one straight road - if you open your eyes you can go along it. I don't see the need to search for all sorts of clever short cuts. Happiness and sadness are both on the road - there is no road that avoids them - but peace is found only on this road, nowhere else.

Only in love are unity and duality not in conflict.

Love's gift cannot be given, it waits to be accepted.

Love does not claim possession, but gives freedom.

Life is given to us, we earn it by giving it.

Life's errors cry for the merciful beauty that can modulate their isolation into a harmony with the whole.

Love is an endless mystery, because there is no reasonable cause that could explain it.

Love is the only reality and it is not a mere sentiment. It is the ultimate truth that lies at the heart of creation.

Love adorns itself; it seeks to prove inward joy by outward beauty.

Love is not a mere impulse, it must contain truth, which is law.

In love we find a joy which is ultimate because it is the ultimate truth.

Let the dead have the immortality of fame, but the living the immortality of love.

He alone may chastise who loves.

- Quotation

Let your love see me even through the barrier of nearness.

Let my love, like sunlight, surround you and yet give you illumined freedom.

Beauty is simply reality seen with the eyes of love.

In love I pay my endless debt to you for what you are.

He who wants to do good, knocks at the gate; he who loves finds the gates open.

The biggest changes in a women's nature are brought by love; in man, by ambition.

We live in the world when we love it.

Chastity is a wealth that comes from abundance of love.

Why did the flower fade? I pressed it to my heart with anxious love, that is why the flower faded.

Those who are near me do not know that you are nearer to me than they are
Those who speak to me do not know that my heart is full with your unspoken words
Those who crowd in my path do not know that I am walking alone with you
Those who love me do not know that their love brings you to my heart

The mighty desert is burning for the love of a blade of grass who shakes her head and laughs and flies away.

As a flower plucked from a tree gradually droops and shrivels, love that avoids the harsh realities of practical life cannot thrive on its own resources.

Some day I shall sing to thee in the sunrise of some other world, I have seen thee before in the light of the earth, in the love of man.

The emancipation of our physical nature is in attaining health, of our social being in attaining goodness, and of our self in attaining love.

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times, in life after life, in age after age forever.

God seeks comrades and claims love, the Devil seeksslaves and claims obedience.

Where one loves, one can follow without agreeing - one can surrender oneself with eyes open.

LOVE! when you come with the burning lamp of pain in your hand, I can see your face and know you as bliss.

For the worthy there are many rewards on God's earth, but God has specially reserved love for the unworthy.

I shall ever try to drive all evils away from my heart and keep my love in flower, knowing that thou hast thy seat in the inmost shrine of my heart.

I'm lost in the middle of my birthday. I want my friends, their touch, with the earth's last love. I will take life's final offering, I will take the last human blessing.

I shall ever try to drive all evils away from my heart and keep my love in flower, knowing that thou hast thy seat in the inmost shrine of my heart. And it shall be my endeavour to reveal thee in my actions, knowing it is thy power gives me strength to act.

Essentially man is not a slave either of himself or of the world; but he is a lover. His freedom and fulfilment is in love, which is another name for perfect comprehension.

Great calm, generous detachment, selfless love, disinterested effort: these are what make for success in life. If you can find peace in yourself and can spread comfort around you, you will be happier than an empress.

Our nature is obscured by work done by the compulsion of want or fear. The mother reveals herself in the service of her children, so our true freedom is not the freedom from action but freedom in action, which can only be attained in the work of love.

His love for me seemed to overflow my limits by its flood of wealth and service. But my necessity was more for giving than foe receiving; for love is a vagabond, who can make his flowers bloom in the wayside dust, better than in the crystal jars kept in the drawing-room.

Ah! How we all love to be deluded! We have a secret dread of being thought ignorant. And we end by being ignorant after all, only we have done it in a long and roundabout way.

The world loved man when he smiled. The world became afraid of him when he laughed.

Life has become richer by the love that has been lost.

I shall die again and again to know that life is inexhaustible.

The fundamental desire of life is the desire to exist.

Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time like dew on the tip of a leaf.

For what are obstacles to the lower creatures are opportunities to the higher life of man.

Let me think that there is one among those stars that guides my life through the dark unknown.

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Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.

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If you cry because the sun has gone out of your life, your tears will prevent you from seeing the stars.

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I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.

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The one who plants trees, knowing that he will never sit in their shade, has at least started to understand the meaning of life.

God never under any conditions binds His creation with fetters; He awakens it through constant changes to ever new life.

The highest education is that which does not merely give us information but makes our life in harmony with all existence.

Death belongs to life as birth does
The walk is in the raising of the
foot as in the laying of it down.

All the great utterances of man have to be judged not by the letter but by the spirit - the spirit which unfolds itself with the growth of life in history.

It came to be the natural rule of life with him, that no one should add to the burden of the world, but that each should try to lighten it.

In pleasure and in pain I stand not by the side of men, and thus stand by thee. I shrink to give up my life, and thus do not plunge into the great waters of life.

In our desire for eternal life we pray for an eternity of our habit and comfort, forgetting that immortality is in repeatedly transcending the definite forms of life in order to pursue the infinite truth of life.

I surely know my pride will go to the wall, my life will burst its bonds in exceeding pain, and my empty heart will sob out in music like a hollow reed, and the stone will melt in tears.

Man's abiding happiness is not in getting anything but in giving himself up to what is greater than himself, to ideas which are larger than his individual life, the idea of his country, of humanity, of God.

They knew that mere appearance and disappearance are on the surface like waves on the sea, but life which is permanent knows no decay or diminution.

In the open world, all is change, all is life, all is movement. And he whoever moves and journeys with this life movement, dancing and playing on his flute as he goes, he is the true Renouncer. He is the true disciple of the minstrel Poet.

Mother, it is no gain, thy bondage of finery, if it keep one shut off from the healthful dust of the earth, if it rob one of the right of entrance to the great fair of common human life.

Day by day thou art making me worthy of the simple, great gifts that thou gavest to me unasked- this sky and the light, this body and the life and the mind - saving me from perils of overmuch desire.

The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures. It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth in numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.

If my heart is breaking - let it break! That will not make the world bankrupt - nor even me; for man is so much greater than the things he loses in this life. The very ocean of tears has its other shore, else none would have ever wept.

King, they work, because they must. We work, because we are in love with life. That is why they condemn us as unpractical, and we condemn them as lifeless.

My dearest life, I know you are not mine forever; but do love me even if it’s for this moment. After that I shall vanish into the forest where you cast me, I won’t ask anyone for anything again. Give me something that can last me till I die.

The little flower lies in the dust. It sought the path of the butterfly.

Inspiration follows aspiration.

Don’t limit a child to your own learning.

In Art, man reveals himself and not his objects.

Ask me no questions, and I will tell you no lies.

We gain freedom when we have paid the full price.

The stars are not afraid to appear like fireflies.

If no one responds to your call, then go your own way alone.

Age considers; youth ventures.

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It is very simple to be happy but it is very difficult to be simple.

Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark.

Truth cannot afford to be tolerant where it faces positive evil.

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Bigotry tries to keep truth safe in its hand with a grip that kills it.

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You can't cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.

Trees are the earth's endless effort to speak to the listening heaven.

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Everything comes to us that belongs to us if we create the capacity to receive it.

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The real frienship is like fluorescence, it shines better when everything has darken.

Let us not be sheltered from dangers but to be fearless when facing them.

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The greed for fruit misses the flower.

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Our creation is the modification of relationship.

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You smiled and talked to me of nothing and I felt that for this I had been waiting long.

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Like the meeting of the seagulls and the waves we meet and come near. The seagulls fly off, the waves roll away and we depart.

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Emancipation from the bondage of the soil is no freedom for the tree.

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The winds of grace are blowing all the time, but it is you that must raise your sails.

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Come oh come ye tea-thirsty restless ones - the kettle boils, bubbles and sings, musically.

We gain freedom when we have paid the full price for our right to live.

I understand the voice of your stars and the silence of your trees.

Man's cry is to reach his fullest expression.

The winds of grace are always blowing, but it is you that must raise your sails.

Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man.

Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark.

Music fills the infinite between two souls.

Men are cruel, but Man is kind.

Facts are many, but the truth is one.

He who is too busy doing good finds no time to be good.

The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.

God waits to win back his own flowers as gifts from man's hands.

The spirit of rejection finds its support in the consciousness of separateness; the spirit of acceptance finds its base in the consciousness of unity.

If he is weak enough to grow smaller to fit himself to his covering, then it becomes a process of gradual suicide by shrinkage of the soul.

God may grand us gifts, but the merit of being able to take and hold them must be our own. Alas for the boons that slip through unworthy hands!

Neither the colourless vagueness of cosmopolitanism, nor the fierce self-idolatry of nation-worship, is the goal of human history.

When I stand before thee at the day's end, thou shalt see my scars and know that I had my wounds and also my healing.

Nirvana is not the blowing out of the candle. It is the extinguishing of the flame because day is come.

The potentiality of perfection outweighs actual contradictions... Existence in itself is here to prove that it cannot be an evil.

Asks the Possible of the Impossible, "Where is your dwelling-place?" "In the dreams of the Impotent," comes the answer.

Once we dreamt that we were strangers. We wake up to find that we were dear to each other.

Perfect gain is the best of all; but if that is impossible, then the next best gain is perfect losing.

I will sit in the pupil of your eyes and that will carry your sight into the heart of the things.

Spurious fame spreads from tongue to tongue like the fog of the early dawn before the sun rises.

If I say that He is within me, the universe is ashamed; if I say that He is without me, it is falsehood.

That side of our existence whose direction is towards the infinite seeks not wealth, but freedom and joy.

Gray hairs are signs of wisdom if you hold your tongue, speak and they are but hairs, as in the young.

Rabindranath Tagore Sayings

You can't cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water. Don't let yourself indulge in vain wishes.

Ah, thou hast made my heart captive in the endless meshes of thy music, my master!

The world has kissed my Soul with its pain, asking for its return in Songs.

The Taj Mahal rises above the banks of the river like a solitary tear suspended on the cheek of time.

Reach high, for stars lie hidden in you. Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal.

Depth of friendship does not depend on length of acquaintance.

You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.

Not hammer-strokes, but dance of the water, sings the pebbles into perfection.

I have my stars in the sky, but oh for my little lamp unlit in my house.

We read the world wrong and say that it deceives us.

when you came you cried and everybody smiled with joy; when you go smile and let the world cry for you.

Oh my only friend, my best beloved, the gates are open in my
house—do not pass by like a dream.

We cross infinity with every step;
we meet eternity in every second.

I have spent many days stringing and unstringing my instrument
while the song I came to sing remains unsung.

YOU are the big drop of dew under the lotus leaf,
I am the smaller one on its upper side,'
said the dewdrop to the lake.

The small wisdom is like water in a glass:
clear, transparent, pure.
The great wisdom is like the water in the sea:
dark, mysterious, impenetrable.

Pleasure is frail like a dewdrop, while it laughs it dies. But
sorrow is strong and abiding. Let sorrowful love wake in your
eyes.

Perhaps the crescent moon smiles in doubt
at being told that it is a fragment
awaiting perfection.

Those who wish to sit, shut their eyes,
and meditate to know if the world's true or lies,
may do so. It's their choice. But I meanwhile
with hungry eyes that can't be satisfied
shall take a look at the world in broad daylight.

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 it.

I cannot tell why this heart languishes in silence.
It is for small needs it never asks, or knows or remembers.

Let me not look for allies in life's battlefield, But to my own strength.
Let me not crave in anxious fear to be saved, But for the patience to win my freedom.

I have on my table a violin string. It is free to move in any direction I like. If I twist one end, it responds; it is free.
But it is not free to sing. So I take it and fix it into my violin. I bind it and when it is bound, it is free for the first time to sing.

Let me light my lamp", says the star, "And never debate if it will help to remove the darkness”.

To be outspoken is easy when you do not wait to speak the complete truth.

By unrighteousness man prospers, gains what appears desirable, conquer enemies, but perishes a the root.

There is no day nor night, nor form nor colour, and never, never a word.

Let him only see the thorns who has eyes to see the rose.

Don't limit a child to your own learning, for she was born in another time.

When you have finished with others, that is my time.

Cannot choose the best. The best chooses me.

If you shut your door to all errors truth will be shut out.

The sparrow is sorry for the peacock at the burden of its tail.

A dewdrop is a perfect integrity that has no filial memory of its parentage.

Set the bird's wings with gold and it will never again soar in thesky.

What you are you do not see, what you see is your shadow.

The speech of my heart will be carried on in murmurings of a song.

Truth in her dress finds facts too tight. In fiction she moves with ease.

We come nearest to the great when we are great in humility.

Her wistful face haunts my dreams like the rain at night.

Man is a born child, his power is the power of growth.

Leave out my name from the gift if it be a burden, but keep my song.

I have lost my dewdrop", cries the flower to the morning sky that lost all its stars.

Don't limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time.

When I go from hence, let this be my parting word, that what I have seen is unsurpassable.

These paper boats of mine are meant to dance on the ripples of hours, and not reach any destination.

For we women are not only the deities of the household fire, but the flame of the soul itself.

I sit at my window this morning where the world like a passer-by stops for a moment, nods to me and goes.

Man can destroy and plunder, earn and accumulate, invent and discover, but he is great because his soul comprehends all.

At the immortal touch of thy hands my little heart loses its limits in joy and gives birth to utterance ineffable.

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 it.

For here rolls the sea, and even here lies the other shore waiting to be reached—yes, here is this everlasting present, not distant, not anywhere else.

The water in a vessel is sparkling; the water in the sea is dark. The small truth has words which are clear; the great truth has great silence.

Stray birds of summer come to my window to sing and fly away. And yellow leaves of autumn, which have no songs, flutter and fall there with a sigh.

Away from the sight of thy face my heart knows no rest nor respite, and my work becomes an endless toil in a shoreless sea of toil.

If the cow alone is to be held sacred from slaughter, and not the buffalo, then that is bigotry, not religion. *

Let my thoughts come to you, when I am gone, like the afterglow of sunset at the margin of starry silence.

Free me as free is the forest fire, as is the thunder that laughs aloud and hurls defiance to darkness.

The soil in return for her service keeps the tree tied to her; the sky asks nothing and leaves it free.

The newer people, of this modern age, are more eager to amass than to realize.

Clothed in facts truth feels oppressed. In the garb of poetry it moves easy and free.

I leave no trace of wings in the air, but I am glad that I had my flight.

A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it.

Vanity is not like a horse or an elephant requiring expensive fodder.

The world speaks to me in pictures, my soul answers in music.

At the end of the day I hasten in fear lest thy gate to be shut; but I find that yet there is time.

The hidden clash of a silent conflict like this is far harder to bear than an open quarrel.

Tears came to my eyes. I forgot that he was a poor Cabuli fruit-seller, while I was—. But no, what was I more than he? He also was a father.

Deliverance is not for me in renunciation. I feel the embrace of freedom in a thousand bonds of delight.

My day is done, and I am like a boat drawn on the beach, listening to the dance-music of the tide in the evening.

Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.

Beauty is in the ideal of perfect harmony which is in the Universal Being; Truth the perfect comprehension of the Universal Mind.

When a man does not realise his kinship with the world, he lives in a prison-house whose walls are alien to him.

In Indian music, it is not possible to build anything other than the raga basis. We can run away from its fetters, but not from its main outline.

In your body is the garden of flowers. Take your seat on the thousand petals of the lotus, and there gaze on the Infinite Beauty.

Though its colour be not deep and its smell be faint, use this flower in thy service and pluck it while there is time.

Alas, for our foolish human nature! Its fond mistakes are persistent. The dictates of reason take a long time to assert their sway.

At last, when no one else came, Mother Sleep soothed with her soft caresses the wounded heart of the motherless lad.

The time comes when it can stop no longer, for the competition grows keener, organization grows vaster, and selfishness attains supremacy.

In this world’s endless time and boundless space One may be born at last to match my sovereign grace.

Rebelliously, I put out the light in my house, and Your sky surprised me with its stars.

He who has the knowledge has the responsibility to impart it to the students.

I cannot tell why this heart languishes in silence. It is for small needs it never asks, or knows or remembers.

Your idol is shattered in the dust to prove that God's dust is greater than your idol

The mind, sharp but not broad, sticks at every point but does not move.

He wanted to go out into the open country and fill his lungs with fresh air.

It is the tears of the earth that keep her smiles in bloom.

The music of the far-away summer flutters around the Autumn seeking its former nest.

If you shed tears when you miss the sun, you also miss the stars.

Man's history is being shaped according to the difficulties it encounters.

Sorrow is hushed into peace in my heart like the evening among the silent trees.

Night's darkness is the bag that bursts with the gold of the dawn.

Never be afraid of the moments--thus sings the voice of the everlasting.

Do not say it is morning and dismiss it with a name of yesterday.

The road is lonely in its crowd for it is not loved.

This abstract being, the Nation, is ruling India.

A mind all logic is like a knife all blade.

Your speech is simple, my Master, but not theirs who talk of you.

Man goes into the noisy crowd to drown his own clamour of silence.

Let me keep your footprints in my heart.

Praise shames me, for I secretly beg for it.

The mountain remains unmoved at seeming defeat by the mist.

Do not blame your food because you have no appetite.

Let only that little be left of me whereby I may name thee my all.

The echo mocks her origin to prove she is the original.

By plucking her petals you do not gather the beauty of the flower.

The burden of self is lightened when I laugh at myself.

My heart is homesick to-day for the one sweet hour across the sea of time.

It is very simple to be happy, but it is very difficult to be simple.

We must know with absolute certainty that essentially we are spirit.

When we rejoice in our fullness, then we can part with out fruits with joy.

The world is the ever-changing foam that floats on the surface of a sea of silence.

The flower which is single need not envy the thorns that are numerous.

Maiden, your simplicity, like the blueness of the lake, reveals your depth of truth.

Nations which have got on in the world have done so by action, not by ebullition.

Truth comes as conqueror only to those who have lost the art of receiving it as a guest.

By plucking her petals, you do not gather the beauty of the flower.

The woodcutter's axe begged for it's handle from the tree. The tree gave it.

Beauty is truth's smile when she beholds her own face in a perfect mirror.

Mistakes live in the neighborhood of truth and therefore delude us.

No civilized society can thrive upon victims, whose humanity has been permanently mutilated.

It is our mission to face it and prove our humanity by dealing with it in the fullest truth.

Wherever our heart touches the One, in the small or the big, it finds the touch of the infinite.

I live in this little world of mine and am afraid to make it the least less. Lift me into thy world and let me have the freedom gladly to lose my all.

I really did think at one time that I was on the verge of becoming a poet, but Providence was kind enough to save me from that disaster.

Even he whose near ones have all died, one by one, is not alone-companionship comes for him from behind the screen of death.

The sands of desert may be very white and shiny, but I would much rather sow my seeds in black soil.

Day by day thou art making me worthy of thy full acceptance by refusing me ever and anon, saving me from perils of weak, uncertain desire.

WOMAN, when you move about in your household service your limbs sing like a hill stream among its pebbles.

India is there to unite all human races. Because of that reason in India we have not been given the unity of races.

But the child's faith never admits defeat, and it would snatch at the mantle of death itself to turn him back.

Haralal explained why the money came to his house at night, like birds to their nest, to be scattered next morning.

The modern age has brought the geography of the earth near to us, but made it difficult for us to come into touch with man.

I have only one prayer to offer to God, and it is that when I have been driven out of every society He will give me shelter at His own feet.

We long for things not because they are great in themselves, but because our greed exaggerates them and makes them appear great.

True modernism is freedom of mind, not slavery of taste. It is independence of thought and action, not tutelage under European schoolmasters.

The pain of dwelling on the wrongs done to us by other people far exceeds the little bit of pleasure we derive from condemning others for their guilt.

Purity, they imagined, was only becoming in those on whom fortune had not smiled. It is the moon which has room or stains, not the stars.

He is neither manifest nor hidden, He is neither revealed nor unrevealed: there are no words to tell that which He is. He is without form, without quality, without decay.

This longing for the perfect expression of his self is more deeply inherent in man than his hunger and thirst for bodily sustenance, his lust for wealth and distinction.

In fact, man has been able to make his pursuit of power easier to-day by his art of mitigating the obstructive forces that came from the higher region of his humanity.

The revilement of the infinite in the finite, which is the motive of all creation, is not seen in its perfection in the starry heavens, in the beauty of the flowers. It is in the soul of man.

The traveler has to knock at every alien door to come to his own, and he has to wonder through all the outer worlds to reach the innermost shrine at the end.

You never look at these flowers; therefore they become stale to you. If you would only look into them, then your reading and writing would go to the winds.

Men can only think. Women have a way of understanding without thinking. Woman was created out of God's own fancy. Man, He had to hammer into shape.

If I can't make it through one door, I'll go through another door- or i'll make a door. Something terrific will come no matter how dark the present.

Thou didst not turn in contempt from my childish play among dust, and the steps that I heard in my playroom are the same that are echoing from star to star.

They who from birth have had no other speech than the trembling of their lips learn a language of the eyes, endless in expression, deep as the sea, clear as the heavens, wherein play dawn and sunset, light and shadow.

For a boy of fourteen his own home is the only Paradise. To live in a strange house with strange people is little short of torture, while the height of bliss is to receive the kind looks of women, and never to be slighted by them.

Be not concerned about her heart, my heart: be content if the music is true, though the words are not to be believed; enjoy the grace that dances like a lily on the rippling, deceiving surface, whatever may lie beneath.

The man whose acquaintance with the world does not lead him deeper than science leads him, will never understand what it is that the man with the spiritual vision finds in these natural phenomena.

Women lose their delicacy and refinement, when they are compelled night and day to haggle with their destiny over things pitifully small, and for this they are blamed by those whom their toil supports.

As in intellectual error, so in evil of any other form, its essence is impermanence, for it cannot accord with the whole. Every moment it is being corrected by the totality of things and keeps changing its aspect.

I longed to find Bimala blossoming fully in all her truth and power. But the thing I forgot to calculate was, that one must give up all claims based on conventional rights, if one would find a person freely revealed in truth.

The highest mission of education is to help us to realise the inner principle of the unity of all knowledge and all the activities of our social and spiritual being.

Of course, I'm dying to be about for ever so long. I'll ask the King to find me the polar star. I must have seen it often, but I don't know exactly which it is.

Beauty is sweet to us, because she dances to the same fleeting tune with our lives. Knowledge is precious to us, because we shall never have time to complete it. All is done and finished in the eternal Heaven. But earth's flowers of illusion are kept eternally fresh by death.

Death, you are no different to me than my lover with cloud-coloured skin, and your hair a mass of dark cloud, your hands like blood-red lotus, and your lips the colour of blood.

I take pride in this great wall, and I plaster it with dust and sand lest a least hole should be left in this name; and for all the care I take I lose sight of my true being.

he lamps in one street after another were lighted till it seemed to him that a pervading darkness, like some demon, was keeping its eyes wide open to watch every movement of its victim. *

The world by day is like European music; a flowing concourse of vast harmony, composed of concord and discord and many disconnected fragments. And the night world is our Indian music; one pure, deep and tender raga

The fish in the water is silent, the animals on the earth is noisy, the bird in the air is singing. But man has in him the silence of the sea, the noise of the earth and the music of the air.

Leave this chanting and singing and telling of beads! Whom dost thou worship in this lonely dark corner of a temple with doors all shut? Open thine eyes and see thy God is not before thee!

Children are living beings - more living than grown-up people who have built shells of habit around themselves. Therefore it is absolutely necessary for their mental health and development that they should not have mere schools for their lessons, but a world whose guiding spirit is personal love.

The earth, water and light, fruits and flowers, to her were not merely physical phenomena to be turned to use and then left aside. They were necessary to her in the attainment of her ideal of perfection, as every note is necessary to the completeness of the symphony.

They come from my imagination; for, as you know, truth is silent, and it is imagination only which waxes eloquent. Reality represses the flow of feeling like a rock; imagination cuts out a path for itself.

Oh! what lies we women have to tell! When we are mothers, we tell lies to pacify our children; and when we are wives, we tell lies to pacify the fathers of our children. We are never free from this necessity.

The lad himself becomes painfully self-conscious. When he talks with elderly people he is either unduly forward, or else so unduly shy that he appears ashamed of his very existence.

Perhaps the new dawn will come from this horizon, from the East where the sun rises; and then, unvanquished Man will retrace his path of conquest, despite all barriers, to win back his lost heritage.

When we were young, we understood all sweet things; and we could detect the sweets of a fairy story by an unerring science of our own. We never cared for such useless things as knowledge. We only cared for truth.

It was chilly weather. Through the window the rays of the sun touched my feet, and the slight warmth was very welcome. It was almost eight o'clock, and the early pedestrians were returning home with their heads covered.

I have spent a fortune traveling to distant shores and looked at lofty mountains and boundless oceans, and yet I haven't found time to take a few steps from my house to look at a single dew drop on a single blade of grass.

The traveller in the read-brown clothes that he wears that dust may not show upon him, the girl searching in her bed for the petals fallen from the wreath of her royal lover, the servant or the bride awaiting the master's home-coming in the empty house, are images of the heart turning to God.

Many an hour I have spent in the strife of the good and the evil, but now it is the pleasure of my playmate of the empty days to draw my heart on to him;

When old words die out on the tongue, new melodies break forth from the heart; and where the old tracks are lost, new country is revealed with its wonders.

But when physical appearance evades the scrutiny of our senses and enters the sanctuary of our hearts, then it can forget itself. I know, from my childhood's experience, how devotion is beauty itself, in its inner aspect.

If one had to fill in, little by little, the gap between day and night, it would take an eternity to do it. But the sun rises and the darkness is dispelled- a moment is sufficient to overcome an infinite distance.

The young student sits with his head bent over his books, and his mind straying in youth's dreamland; where prose is prowling on the desk and poetry hiding in the heart.

Be not ashamed, my brothers, to stand before the proud and the powerful With your white robe of simpleness. Let your crown be of humility, your freedom the freedom of the soul. Build God's throne daily upon the ample bareness of your poverty And know that what is huge is not great and pride is not everlasting.

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.

The fact is that man is as much a mystery to woman as woman is to man. If that were not so, the separation of the sexes would only have been a waste of Nature's energy.

When a material body breaks it may be put together again. But when two human beings are divided, after a long separation, they never re-unite at the same place, and to the same time; for the mind is a living thing, and moment by moment it grows and changes.

Woman knows man well enough where he is weak, but she is quite unable to fathom him where he is strong. The fact is that man is as much a mystery to woman as woman is to man. If that were not so, the separation of the sexes would only have been a waste of Nature's energy.

The water vessel, taken as a vessel only, raises the question, "Why does it exist at all?" Through its fitness of construction, it offers the apology for its existence. But where it is a work of beauty it has no question to answer; it has nothing to do, but to be.

Whatever we understand and enjoy in human products instantly becomes ours, wherever they might have their origin... Let me feel with unalloyed gladness that all the great glories of man are mine.

From my heart comes out and dances the image of my own desire. The gleaming vision flits on. I try to clasp it firmly, it eludes me and leads me astray. I seek what I cannot get, I get what I do not seek.

The song being great in its own wealth, why should it wait upon the words? Rather does it begin where mere words fail. Its power lies in the region of the inexpressible; it tells us what the words cannot.

I am willing to serve my country, but my worship I reserve for Right which is far greater than my country. To worship my country as a god is to bring a curse upon it.

You are dark, even as the flints are. You must come to violent conflicts and make a noise in order to produce your sparks. But their disconnected flashes merely assist your pride, and not your clear vision.

I have read in books that we are called 'caged birds'. I cannot speak for others, but I had so much in this cage of mine that there was not room for it in the universe- at least that is what I then felt.

The touch of an infinite mystery passes over the trivial and the familiar, making it break out into ineffable music... The trees, the stars, and the blue hills ache with a meaning which can never be uttered in words.

The birds looked upon me as nothing but a man, quite a trifling creature without wings - and they would have nothing to do with me. Were it not so I would build a small cabin for myself among their crowd of nests and pass my days counting the sea waves.

Only the trees and beasts and birds tell unmitigated truths, because these poor things have not the power to invent. In this men show their superiority to the lower creatures, and women beat even men. Neither is a profusion of ornament unbecoming for a woman, nor a profusion of untruth.

But when the physical appearance evades the scrutiny of our senses and enters the sanctuary of our hearts, then it can forget itself. I know, from my childhood's experience, how devotion is beauty itself, in its inner aspect.

These were autumn mornings, the very time of year when kings of old went forth to conquest; and I, never stirring from my little corner in Calcutta, would let my mind wander over the whole world.

We can look upon a road from two different points of view. One regards it as dividing us from the object of our desire; in that case we count every step of our journey over it as something attained by force in the face of obstruction. The other sees it as the road which leads us to our destination; and as such it is part of our goal.

In this world of human affairs there is no worse nuisance than a boy at the age of fourteen. He is neither ornamental nor useful. It is impossible to shower affection on him as on a little boy; and he is always getting in the way. If he talks with a childish lisp he is called a baby, and if he answers in a grown-up way he is called impertinent. In fact any talk at all from him is resented.