Rabindranath Tagore: Quotes about life

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

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

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

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

“My dearest life, I know you are not mine forever; but do love me even if it’s for this moment. After that I shall vanish into the forest where you cast me, I won’t ask anyone for anything again. Give me something that can last me till I die.”

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

“Great calm, generous detachment, selfless love, disinterested effort: these are what make for success in life. If you can find peace in yourself and can spread comfort around you, you will be happier than an empress.”

“And because I love this life
I know I shall love death as well.
The child cries out when
From the right breast the mother
Takes it away, in the very next moment
To Find in the left one
Its consolation.”

“The fountain of death makes the still water of life play.”

“According to the Upanishads, the complete aspect of Truth is in the reconciliation on the finite and the infinite, of everchanging things and the eternal spirit of perfection. When in our life and work the harmony between these two is broken, then either our life is thinned into a shadow, or it becomes gross with accumulations.”

“The wise man warns me that life is but a dewdrop on the lotus leaf.”

“I saw, all of a sudden, an odd-looking bird making its way through the water to the opposite bank, followed by a great commotion. I found it was a domestic fowl which had managed to escape impending doom in the galley by jumping overboard and was now trying frantically to swim across. It had almost gained the bank when the clutches of its relentless pursuers closed on it, and it was brought back in triumph, gripped by the neck. I told the cook I would not have any meat for dinner. I really must give up animal food. We manage to swallow flesh only because we do not think of the cruel and sinful thing we do. There are many crimes which are the creation of man himself, the wrongfulness of which is put down to their divergence from habit, custom, or tradition. But cruelty is not of these. It is a fundamental sin, and admits of no argument or nice distinctions. If only we do not allow our heart to grow callous, its protest against cruelty is always clearly heard; and yet we go on perpetrating cruelties easily, merrily, all of us ⎯ in fact, any one who does not join in is dubbed a crank. … if, after our pity is aroused, we persist in throttling our feelings simply in order to join others in their preying upon life, we insult all that is good in us. I have decided to try a vegetarian diet.”

“To Indians the idea of the transmigration of the soul from animal to man, and man to animal, does not seem strange, and so from our scriptures pity for all sentient creatures has not been banished as a sentimental exaggeration. When I am in close touch with Nature in the country, the Indian in me asserts itself and I cannot remain coldly indifferent to the abounding joy of life throbbing within the soft down-covered breast of a single tiny bird.”

“It sometimes strikes me how immensely fortunate I am that each day should take its place in my life, either reddened with the rising and setting sun, or refreshingly cool with deep, dark clouds, or blooming like a white flower in the moonlight. What untold wealth!”

“In the heart of Europe runs the purest stream of human love, of justice, of spirit of self-sacrifice for higher ideals. The Christian culture of centuries has sunk deep in her life's core. In Europe we have seen noble minds who have ever stood up for the rights of man irrespective of colour and creed.”

“Life's errors cry for the merciful beauty
that can modulate their isolation
into a harmony with the whole.”

“One of the many suppressed longings of creation which cry after fulfilment is for neglected joys within reach; while we are busy pursuing chimerical impossibilities we famish our lives…The emptiness left by easy joys, untasted, is ever growing in my life. And the day may come when I shall feel that, could I but have the past back, I would strive no more after the unattainable, but drain to the full these little, unsought, everyday joys which life offers.”