Section 6 : Higher Life
Founding Address (1876), Life and Destiny (1913)
Context: Man is like a tree, with the mighty trunk of intellect, the spreading branches of imagination, and the roots of the lower instincts that bind him to the earth. The moral life, however, is the fruit he bears; in it his true nature is revealed.
It is the prerogative of man that he need not blindly follow the law of his natural being, but is himself the author of a higher moral law, and creates it even in acting it out.
“The roots below the earth claim no rewards for making the branches fruitful.”
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Source: Stray Birds (1916)
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Rabindranath Tagore 178
Bengali polymath 1861–1941Related quotes
“The branch might seem like the fruit's origin:
In fact, the branch exist because of the fruit.”
Mathnawi
Teachings of Rumi (1999)
“I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make fruit, the fruit rots
to make earth.”
"Shine, Perishing Republic" (1939)
(J. Hudson Taylor. Dwelling in Him. Robesonia: Overseas Missionary Fellowship).
Of Mentors and Intellectuals http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2008/05/29/weir, by Rob Weir (May 29, 2008)
I am the Blues: the Willie Dixon Story (with Don Snowden, 1990), p. 4.
“What we are after is the ROOT and not the branches.”
Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 11
Context: What we are after is the ROOT and not the branches. The root is the real knowledge; the branches are surface knowledge. Real knowledge breeds "body feel" and personal expression; surface knowledge breeds mechanical conditioning and imposing limitation and squelches creativity.
“The roots of education … are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.”
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers
“Money is the fruit of evil as often as the root of it.”
Don Quixote in England (1731), Act I, scene vi http://books.google.com/books?id=8_VbAAAAQAAJ&q=%22Money+is+the+fruit+of+evil+as+often+as+the+root+of+it%22&pg=PA13#v=onepage
“The blues is the roots; everything else is the fruits.”
Attributed