ShareYourGroupShareYourGroupQuotes

Rabindranath Tagore quotes

Rabindranath Tagore (1861 to 1941) was a Bengali poet, the author of India's national anthem and, in 1913, the first Asian winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. He translated much of his own work into English. The lines below are his own English words, with the book named.

From Gitanjali (1912)

  • Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high.

    Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali (1912), poem 35

  • Thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure.

    Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali (1912), poem 1

  • Leave this chanting and singing and telling of beads!

    Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali (1912), poem 11

From Stray Birds (1916)

  • If you shed tears when you miss the sun, you also miss the stars.

    Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds (1916)

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

    Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds (1916)

  • Man is a born child, his power is the power of growth.

    Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds (1916)

  • The stars are not afraid to appear like fireflies.

    Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds (1916)

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

    Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds (1916)

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

    Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds (1916)

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

    Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds (1916)

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

    Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds (1916)

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

    Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds (1916)

  • Men are cruel, but Man is kind.

    Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds (1916)

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

    Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds (1916)

From other books

  • Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers but to be fearless in facing them.

    Rabindranath Tagore, Fruit-Gathering (1916)

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

    Rabindranath Tagore, Fireflies (1928)

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

    Rabindranath Tagore, Fireflies (1928)

Good to know

More quotations

VivekanandaGandhi and freedomUrdu and Hindi poetsAll quotations