Rabindranath Tagore

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

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

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

The greatest distance in this world is not that between living and death, it is when I am just before you, and you don't know that I love you.

We live in the world when we love it.

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

Praise shames me, for I secretly beg for it.

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

While God waits for His temple to be built of love, men bring stones.

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

Men are cruel, but Man is kind.

Love gives beauty to everything it touches.

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

All that is not given is lost.

Facts are many but the truth is one.

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

Man is immortal; therefore he must die endlessly. For life is a creative idea; it can only find itself in changing forms.

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

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.

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

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

Beauty is simply reality seen with the eyes of love.

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

The stars are not afraid to appear like fireflies.

Love is when the soul starts to sing and the flowers of your life bloom on their own.

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

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

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

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

Wrong is wrong only when you are at liberty to choose.

Discipline divorced from wisdom is not true discipline, but merely the meaningless following of custom, which is only a disguise for stupidity.

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

The false can never grow into truth by growing in power.

To find God, you must welcome everything.

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

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

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

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

Those who own much have much to fear.

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

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

In Art man reveals himself and not his objects.

What is Art? It is the response of man's creative soul to the call of the Real.

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

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

Age considers, youth ventures.

Every difficulty slurred over will be a ghost to disturb your repose later on.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Music fills the infinite between two souls.

Love is an endless mystery, for it has nothing else to explain it.

Depth of friendship does not depend on length of acquaintance.

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

We gain freedom when we have paid the full price.

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

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

Love remains a secret even when spoken, for only a true lover truly knows that he is loved.

The best kind of wealth is to give up inordinate desires.

In death the many become one; in life the one become many.

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

The flower fades and dies; but he who wears the flower has not to mourn for it for ever.

Compliments win friends, honesty loses them.

The same stream of life that runs through the world runs through my veins night and day.

Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain but for the heart to conquer it.

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

It is in the very heart of our activity that we search for our goal.

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

Do not blame the food because you have no appetite.

Whether joy or sorrow, pain or pleasure; whatsoever may befall thee, accept it serenely with an unvanquished heart.

Overstraining is the enemy of accomplishment. Calm strength that arises from a deep and inexhaustible source is what brings success.

Life itself is a strange mixture. We have to take it as it is, try to understand it, and then to better it.

My eyes have seen much, but they are not weary. My ears have heard much, but they thirst for more.

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

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

I am able to love my God because He gives me freedom to deny Him.

The problem is not how to wipe out all differences, but how to unite with all differences intact.

The main object of teaching is not to give explanations, but to knock at the doors of the mind.

The most important lesson that man can learn from life, is not that there is pain in this world, but that it is possible for him to transmute it into joy.

The fundamental desire of life is the desire to exist.

Only in love are unity and duality not in conflict.

The tendency in modern civilization is to make the world uniform... Let the mind be universal. The individual should not be sacrifice

God respects me when I work; but God loves me when I sing.

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

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

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

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

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

Love does not claim possession but gives freedom.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

From the solemn gloom of the temple children run out to sit in the dust, God watches them play and forgets the priest.