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Rabindranath Tagore on Christmas

1861–1941 India

← All quotes by Rabindranath Tagore

19 quotes

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

Fireflies (1928)

The human soul is on its journey from the law to love, from discipline to liberation, from the moral plane to the spiritual.

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

Fireflies (1928)

Let this be my last word, that I trust in thy love.

Stray Birds (1916)

Every person is worthy of an infinite wealth of love — the beauty of his soul knows no limit.

Glimpses of Bengal (1921)

Want of love is a degree of callousness; for love is the perfection of consciousness.

The infinite being has assumed unto himself the mystery of finitude. And in him who is love the finite and the infinite are made one.

Let the dead have the immortality of fame, but the living the immortality of love.

Stray Birds (1916)

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

Stray Birds (1916)

In love all the contradictions of existence merge themselves and are lost. Only in love are unity and duality not at variance.

My heart, the bird of the wilderness, has found its sky in your eyes.

The Gardener (1915)

Of course man is useful to man, because his body is a marvellous machine and his mind an organ of wonderful efficiency. But he is a spirit as well, and this spirit is truly known only by love.

Civilisation can never sustain itself upon cannibalism of any form. For that by which alone man is true can only be nourished by love and justice.

Please is frail like a dewdrop, while it laughs it dies. But sorrow is strong and abiding. Let sorrowful love wake in your eyes.

The Gardener (1915)

In love, at one of its poles you find the personal, and at the other the impersonal. At one you have the positive assertion — Here I am; at the other the equally strong denial — I am not.

WE live in this world when we love it.

Stray Birds (1916)

We never can have a true view of man unless we have a love for him. Civilisation must be judged and prized, not by the amount of power it has developed, but by how much it has evolved and given expression to, by its laws and institutions, the love of humanity.

The world is ever new to me; like an old friend loved through this and former lives, the acquaintance between us is both long and deep.

Glimpses of Bengal (1921)

Even so, in death the same unknown will appear as ever known to me. And because I love this life, I know I shall love death as well.** 95

Gitanjali (1912)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Rabindranath Tagore (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.