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
The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Carpe-diem, Time Management, Value of Time, Time
The singer has everything within him. The notes come out from his very life. They are not materials gathered from outside.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Singing
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.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Life and Living
We come nearest to the great when we are great in humility.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Humility
When we rejoice in our fullness, then we can part without fruits with joy.
—Rabindranath Tagore
We read the world wrong and say that it deceives us.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Illusion
Asks the Possible of the Impossible, “Where is your dwelling-place?” “In the dreams of the Impotent,” comes the answer.
—Rabindranath Tagore
The meaning of the living words that come out of the experiences of great hearts can never be exhausted by any one system of logical interpretation. They have to be endlessly explained by the commentaries of individual lives, and they gain an added mystery in each new revelation.
—Rabindranath Tagore
In the mountain, stillness surges up to explore its own height; In the lake, movement stands still to contemplate its own depth.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Wilderness
Let me light my lamp, says the tiny star; and never debate whether it will dispel the darkness.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Light
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: Greed, Money
I have spent my days stringing and unstringing my instrument, while the song I came to sing remains unsung.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Carpe-diem
Time is a wealth of change, but the clock in its parody makes it mere change and no wealth.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Time Management
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. Something terrific will come no matter how dark the present.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Adversity
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
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
Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Attitude, Weather, General, Adversity
I do not love him because he is good, but because he is my little child.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Children
We are hidden in ourselves, like a truth hidden in isolated facts. When we know that this One in us is One in all, then our truth is revealed.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Truth
Life’s errors cry for the merciful beauty that can modulate their isolation into a harmony with the whole.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Harmony
Life is given to use, we earn it by giving it.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Service
God waits to win back his own flowers as gifts from man’s hands.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Gift, Gifts
The fundamental desire of life is the desire to exist.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Desire
You are invited to the festival of this world and your life is blessed
—Rabindranath Tagore
You can’t cross a sea merely by staring into the water.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Action, Procrastination
The potentiality of perfection outweighs actual contradictions… Existence in itself is here to prove that it cannot be an evil.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Existence
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
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 can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water. Don’t let yourself indulge in vain wishes.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Adventure, Action
Man is immortal; therefore he must die endlessly. For life is a creative idea; it can only find itself in changing forms.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Immortality
God seeks comrades and claims love, the Devil seeks slaves and claims obedience.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Obedience
Love’s overbrimming mystery joins death and life. It has filled my cup of pain with joy.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Love
No civilized society can thrive upon victims, whose humanity has been permanently mutilated.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Society
Trees are the earth’s endless effort to speak to the listening heaven.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Earth, Gardening
If you shut your door to all errors, truth will be shut out.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Truth, Mistakes
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.
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 hope for the patience to win my freedom.
Grant me that I may not be a coward, feeling your mercy in my success alone;
But let me find the grasp of your hand in my failure.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Courage
Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of humanity.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Hope, Children
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
Emancipation from the bondage of the soil is no freedom for the tree.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Freedom
All that is not given is lost.
—Rabindranath Tagore
Topics: Generosity
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