Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Rabindranath Tagore (Bengali Poet, Polymath)

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) was a Bengali poet, composer, short-story writer, playwright, essayist, and painter who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. He is the pre-eminent literary genius not only of his native Bengal but also of South Asia—possibly the whole of Asia.

Tagore displayed an extraordinary combination of talents. He experimented with various forms of art and sought an outlet first in music, then in drama, opera, and ballet and, toward the end of his life, in painting. Tagore was a talented theatrical artist, a playwright, and a producer of plays. He also inspired and directed the revival and full development of the art of dance in modern India. Tagore is extraordinary for his versatility, exceptional range, and complexity of a creative perspective.

Born in Calcutta, Tagore went to study law in England at age 17 but found the weather depressing. He returned to Calcutta after a year and concurrently wrote, composed music, painted, and did political work. He gained worldwide attention with the English translation of the spiritual verse Gītāñjali (1910; Song Offering,) which featured an appreciatory foreword by the Irish poet William Butler Yeats.

Tagore’s first book was a volume of poetry, Kabi-Kahini (1878; The Tale of the Poet,) followed by novels, short stories, and dramatic works. In addition to Gītāñjali, his major works include Binodini (1902; Eng trans 1964, the first modern novel by an Indian writer,) the collection of poems about childhood The Crescent Moon (1913,) and his best-known play, Chitra (1914.) He also wrote Jivan Smriti (1911; My Reminiscences, 1917) and Chhelebela (1940; My Boyhood Days.)

As a philosopher, Tagore challenged the binarism of India’s spiritual values and the spirit of the West. He held that one’s native culture could be reconciled by acknowledging and absorbing the good in other cultures. Taking into consideration the great conflicts of his time, Tagore articulated his vision of the “universal man.” He wrote, “The unity of human civilization can be better maintained by linking up in fellowship and cooperation of the different civilizations of the world.” And, “Let the mind be universal. The individual should not be sacrificed.”

Tagore’s versatile genius wielded a profound influence on the psyche of the Bengali people. He introduced new prose and verse forms and the use of colloquial language into Bengali literature, thereby freeing it from traditional models based on classical Sanskrit. Only a few literary giants—Shakespeare, Dante, Pushkin, and Goethe—have had as comparable an impact on a people’s language, literature, and cultural identity as Tagore has. He also culturally and politically inspired India and Bangladesh, where he remains the subject of great pride and admiration.

Tagore has the rare distinction of writing the national anthems of three countries: India, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. He was knighted in 1915 but resigned the honor in 1919 as a protest against British policy in Punjab.

More: Wikipedia READ: Works by Rabindranath Tagore

Oneness amongst men, the advancement of unity in diversity? This has been the core religion of India.
Rabindranath Tagore

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. It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth and of death, in ebb and in flow. I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life. And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment.
Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Life

Life’s errors cry for the merciful beauty that can modulate their isolation into a harmony with the whole.
Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Harmony

If you shut your door to all errors, truth will be shut out.
Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Mistakes, Truth

Age considers; youth ventures.
Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Age, Aging

The meaning of our self is not to be found in its separateness from God and others, but in the ceaseless realisation of yoga, of union; not on the side of the canvas where it is blank, but on the side where the picture is being painted.
Rabindranath Tagore

In the world’s audience hall, the simple blade of grass sits on the same carpet with the sunbeams, and the stars of midnight.
Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Belief, Audiences

Love adorns itself; it seeks to prove inward joy by outward beauty.
Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Joy

I am restless. I am athirst for faraway things. My soul goes out in a longing to touch the skirt of the dim distance. O Great Beyond, O the keen call of thy flute! I forget, I ever forget, that I have no wings to fly, that I am bound in this spot evermore.
Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Adventure

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

Depth of friendship does not depend on length of acquaintance.
Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Friendship

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.
Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Birthdays

In the dualism of death and life there is a harmony. We know that the life of a soul, which is finite in its expression and infinite in its principle, must go through the portals of death in its journey to realise the infinite. It is death which is monistic, it has no life in it. But life is dualistic; it has an appearance as well as truth; and death is that appearance, that maya, which is an inseparable companion to life.
Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Harmony

Music fills the infinite between two souls.
Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: One liners, Music

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

God seeks comrades and claims love, the Devil seeks slaves and claims obedience.
Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Obedience

Do not say, “It is morning,” and dismiss it with a name of yesterday. See it for the first time as a newborn child that has no name.
Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Morning

No civilized society can thrive upon victims, whose humanity has been permanently mutilated.
Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Society

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.
Rabindranath Tagore

The greed of gain has no time or limit to its capaciousness. It’s one object is to produce and consume. It has pity neither for beautiful nature nor for living human beings. It is ruthlessly ready without a moment’s hesitation to crush beauty and life out of them, molding them into money.
Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Money, Greed

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

We live in the world when we love it.
Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Love

When we rejoice in our fullness, then we can part without fruits with joy.
Rabindranath Tagore

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

While God waits for His temple to be built of love, men bring stones.
Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Love

The burden of the self is lightened with I laugh at myself.
Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Laughter

We manage to swallow flesh only because we do not think of the cruel and sinful thing that we do. Cruelty… is a fundamental sin, and admits of no arguments or nice distinctions. If only we do not allow our heart to grow callous, it protests against cruelty, is always clearly heard; and yet we go on perpetrating cruelties easily, merrily, all of us – in fact, anyone who does not join in is dubbed a crank
Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Vegetarianism

You are invited to the festival of this world and your life is blessed
Rabindranath Tagore

Trees are the earth’s endless effort to speak to the listening heaven.
Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Gardening, Earth

Emancipation from the bondage of the soil is no freedom for the tree.
Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Freedom

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