Rabindranath Tagore Quotes

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

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.

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

I know how reluctant it makes us feel to give any credit for humanity to the western civilisation when we observe the brutalities into which this nationalism of theirs breaks out, instances of which are so numerous all the world over, — in the late war, in the lynching of negroes, in cowardly outrages allowed to be committed by European soldiers upon helpless Indians, in the rapacity and vandalism practised in Pekin during the Boxer war by the very people who are never tired of vulgarly applying the epithet of Hun to one section of their own confederates. But while I have never sought to gloss over or keep out of mind any of these ugly phenomena, I still aver that in the life of the West they have a large tract where their mind is free ; whence the circulation of their thought currents can surround the world.

Those who in the name of Faith embrace illusion,
kill and are killed.
Even the atheist gets God's blessings-
Does not boast of his religion;

With reverence he lights the lamp of Reason
And pays his homage not to scriptures,
But to the good in man.

The bigot insults his own religion
When he slays a man of another faith.
Conduct he judges not in the light of Reason;
In the temple he raises the blood-stained banner
And worships the devil in the name of God.

All that is shameful and barbarous through the Ages,
Has found a shelter in their temples-
Those they turn into prisons;
O, I hear the trumpet call of Destruction!
Time comes with her great broom
Sweeping all refuse away.

That which should make man free,
They turn into fetters;
That which should unite,
They turn into sword;
That which should bring love
From the fountain of the Eternal,
They turn into prison

And with its waves they flood the world.
They try to cross the river
In a bark riddled with holes;
And yet, in their anguish, whom do they blame?

O Lord, breaking false religion,
Save the blind!
Break! O break
The alter that is drowned in blood.

Let your thunder strike
Into the prison of false religion,

And bring to this unhappy land
The light of Knowledge.

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

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

...those in this world who have the courage to try and solve in their own lives new problems of life are the ones who raise society to greatness! Those who merely live according to rule do not advance society, they only carry it along.

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.

كثيرة هي رغباتي
و ان بكائي من اجلها لمثير للاشفاق
ولكنك كنت تنقذني على الدوام
برفضك القاسي لها
و يوما بعد يوم جعلتني جديرا بعطاياك
العظيمة البسيطة
التي كنت تمنحها لي
بلا طلب مني

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.

Biarlah saya berdoa, bukan untuk dilindungi dari kejahatan, tetapi agar berani menghadapinya.

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

لقد أنفقت ثروة طائلة في السفر إلي شواطئ بعيدة , فرأيت جبالا شاهقة ومحيطات لايحدها حد . ولكني لم أجد متسعاً من الوقت لأن أخطو بضع خطوات قليلة خارج منزلي , لأنظر إلي قطرة واحدة من الندي , علي ورقة واحدة من أوراق العشب

إن الحب المكتوم لحبٌ مقدسٌ ، إنه يتلألأ كجوهرة ،
في غياهب القلب الخفي ويبدو على نور النهار الفاضح ،
قاتماً جديراً بالشفقة
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