Quotes from Rabindranath Tagore

The night kissed the fading day With a whisper: "I am death, your mother, From me you will get new birth."

It is the same life that emerges in joy through the dust of the earth into numberless waves of flower.

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

Music fills the infinite between two souls. This has been muffled by the mist of our daily habits.

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.

O master poet, I have sat down at thy feet. Only let me make my life simple and straight, like a flute of reed for thee to fill with music.

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

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

In the world's audience hall, the simple blade of grass sits on the same carpet with the sunbeams, and the stars of midnight.

For man is by nature an artist.

A butterfly flitting from flower to flower ever remains mine, I lose the one that is netted by me.

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

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.

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

Let my doing nothing when I have nothing to do, become untroubled in its depth of peace, like the evening in the seashore when the water is silent.

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.

Let life be beautiful like summer flowers and death like autumn leaves.

And, indeed, what little of beauty and peace is to be found in the societies of men is owing to the daily performance of small duties, not to big doings and fine talk.

Thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure. This frail vessel thou emptiest again and again, and fillest it ever with fresh life.

If religion, instead of being the manifestation of a spiritual ideal, gives prominence to scriptures and external rites, then does it disturb the peace more than anything else.

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.

Who are you, a hundred years from today, reading my poetry with curiosity?

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.

If you want to know India, study Vivekananda. In him everything is positive and nothing negative.