Rabindranath Tagore
A teacher can never truly teach unless he is still learning himself. A lamp can never light another lamp unless it continues to burn its own flame. The teacher who has come to the end of his subject, who has no living traffic with his knowledge but merely repeats his lesson to his students, can only load their minds, he cannot quicken them.Collection: Teacher
Beauty is simply reality seen with the eyes of loveCollection: Beauty
Go not to the temple to put flowers upon the feet of God, first fill your own house with the fragrance of love. Go not to the temple to light candles before the altar of God, first remove the darkness of sin from your heart. Go not to the temple to bow down your head in prayer, first learn to bow in humility before your fellow men. Go not to the temple to pray on bended knees, first bend down to lift someone who is down trodden. Go not to the temple to ask for forgiveness for your sins, first forgive from your heart those who have sinned against you.Collection: Prayer
Reach high, for stars lie hidden in you. Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal.Collection: Inspirational
If you cry because the sun has gone out of your life, your tears will prevent you from seeing the stars.Collection: Inspirational
The world speaks to me in colors, my soul answers in music.Collection: Music
And because I love this life, I know I shall love death as well.Collection: Rest In Peace
The main object of teaching is not to give explanations, but to knock at the doors of the mind.Collection: Teaching
The roots below the earth claim no rewards for making the branches fruitful.Collection: Inspirational
Inspiration follows aspiration.Collection: Inspiration
All that is not given is lost.Collection: Generosity
A lamp can only light another lamp when it continues to burn in its own flame.Collection: Education
We cross infinity with every step; we meet eternity in every second.Collection: Infinity
The real frienship is like fluorescence, it shines better when everything has darken.Collection: Real
Leave out my name from the gift if it be a burden, but keep my song.Collection: Song
He only has freedom who ideally loves freedom himself and is glad to extend it to others. He who cares to have slaves must chain himself to them. He who builds walls to create exclusion for others builds walls across his own freedom. He who distrusts freedom in others loses his moral right to it.Collection: Wall
The danger inherent in all force grows stronger when it is likely to gain success, for then it becomes temptation.Collection: Temptation
False hope is clung to with all one's might and main, till a day comes when it has sucked the heart dry and it forcibly breaks through its bonds and departs. After that comes the misery of awakening, and then once again the longing to get back into the maze of the same mistakes.Collection: Mistake
My debts are large, my failures great, my shame secret and heavy; yet I come to ask for my good, I quake in fear lest my prayer be granted.Collection: Prayer
Deliverance is not for me in renunciation. I feel the embrace of freedom in a thousand bonds of delight.Collection: Delight
The tyrant claims freedom to kill freedom, and yet keep it for himself.Collection: Freedom
We manage to swallow flesh only because we do not think of the cruel and sinful thing that 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, anyone who does not join in is dubbed a crank.Collection: Karma
Now it is time to sit quiet, face to face with thee, and to sing dedication of life in this silent and overflowing leisure.Collection: Dedication
For the current of our spiritual life creeds, rituals and channels that may thwart or help, according to their fixity or openness. When a symbol or spiritual idea becomes rigidly elaborate in its construction, it supplants the idea which it should support.Collection: Spiritual
Whatever character our theology may ascribe to him, in reality God is the infinite ideal of Man, towards whom men move in their collective growth, with whom they seek their union of love as individuals, in whom they find their ideal of father, friend and beloved.Collection: God
The birds looked upon me as nothing but a man, quite a trifling creature without wings-and they would have nothing to do with me. Were it not so I would build a small cabin for myself among their crowd of nests and pass my days counting the sea waves.Collection: Men
The child ever dwells in the mystery of ageless time,unobscured by the dust of history.Collection: Children
Spurious fame spreads from tongue to tongue like the fog of the early dawn before the sun rises.Collection: Fog
Whatever we understand and enjoy in human products instantly becomes ours, wherever they might have their origin... Let me feel with unalloyed gladness that all the great glories of man are mine.Collection: Men
Obstinate are the trammels, but my heart aches when I try to break them. Freedom is all I want, but to hope for it I feel ashamed. I am certain that priceless wealth is in thee, and that thou art my best friend, but I have not the heart to sweep away the tinsel that fills my room. The shroud that covers me is a shroud of dust and death; I hate it, yet hug it in love. My debts are large, my failures great, my shame secret and heavy; yet when I come to ask for my good, I quake in fear lest my prayer be granted.Collection: Art
The song I came to sing remains unsung to this day. I have spent my days in stringing and in unstringing my instrument. The time has not come true, the words have not been rightly set; only there is the agony of wishing in my heart . . .Collection: Song
If thou speakest not I will fill my heart with thy silence and endure it. I will keep still and wait like the night with starry vigil and its head bent low with patience. The morning will surely come, the darkness will vanish, and thy voice pour down in golden streams breaking through the sky. Then thy words will take wing in songs from every one of my birds' nests, and thy melodies will break forth in flowers in all my forest groves.Collection: Song
Children who are decked with prince's robes and who have jeweled chains round their necks lose all pleasure in play; their dress hampers them at every step. In fear that it may be frayed, or stained with dust, they keep themselves from the world and are afraid ever to move. Mother, it is no gain, thy bondage of finery, if it keep one shut off from the healthful dust of the earth, if it rob one of the right of entrance to the great fair of common human life.Collection: Mother
In the mountain, stillness surges up to explore its own height In the lake, movement stands still to contemplate its own depth.Collection: Lakes
That which oppresses me, is it my soul trying to come out in the open, or the soul of the world knocking at my heart for entrance?Collection: Heart
He alone may chastise who loves.Collection: May
We manage to swallow flesh, only because we do not think of the cruel and sinful thing we do.Collection: Food
Saltwater heals, healing referring to its various forms; tears, cleanses and heals the soul; sweat, cleanses through labor; the ocean, heals in all its forms.Collection: Ocean
I am ashamed of my emptiness," said the Word to the Work. "I know how poor I am when I see you," said the Work to the Word.Collection: Emptiness
Come oh come ye tea-thirsty restless ones -- the kettle boils, bubbles and sings, musically.Collection: Tea
Let only that little be left of me whereby I may name thee my all. Let only that little be left of my will whereby I may feel thee on every side, and come to thee in everything, and offer to thee my love every moment. Let only that little be left of me whereby I may never hide thee. Let only that little of my fetters be left whereby I am bound with thy will, and thy purpose is carried out in my life--and that is the fetter of thy love.Collection: Names
To the birds you gave songs, the birds gave you songs in return. You gave me only a voice, yet asked for more, thus I sing.Collection: Song
The hours trip rapidly away, hiding their dreams in their skirts.Collection: Dream
The music of the far-away summer flutters around the Autumn seeking its former nest.Collection: Summer
Plunge into the deep without fear, with the gladness of April in your heart.Collection: Heart
Poems On Life: Life is given to us, we earn it by giving it. Let the dead have the immortality of fame, but the living the immortality of love. Life's errors cry for the merciful beauty that can modulate their isolation into a harmony with the whole. Life, like a child, laughs, shaking its rattle of death as it runs.Collection: Running
Those who draw their sustenance from science are blessed. It is for me to only derive an occasional pleasure. This is nothing worthy of conceit, but I am indeed touched by the joys. This book is an ode to such joys, a digest of my collections from various sources.Collection: Book
Poems On Time The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough. Time is a wealth of change, but the clock in its parody makes it mere change and no wealth. Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time like dew on the tip of a leaf.Collection: Butterfly
I ask my destiny - what power is this That cruelly drives me onward without rest? My destiny says, "Look round!" I turn back and see It is I myself that is ever pushing me from behind.Collection: Destiny