Rabindranath Tagore -- Wisdom of a Lifetime

THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY-- QUOTES FROM THE BENGALI POET, RABINDRANATH TAGORE


How to receive what we deserve:

• "Everything comes to us that belongs to us if we create the capacity to receive it."

Education:

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

Greatness:

• "We come nearest to the great when we are great in humility."

God, Idols and Children:

• "Your idol is shattered in the dust to prove that God's dust is greater than your idol."

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

 Freedom:

•  "We gain freedom when we have paid the full price."  

•  "Emancipation from the bondage of the soil is no freedom for the tree. "

 Art and Crossing Your Seas of Life:

•   "What is Art? It is the response of man's creative soul to the call of the Real." 

•    "You can't cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water."  

Uniqueness and Solitude:

• "The flower which is single need not envy the thorns that are numerous."

How to Live:

• "We live in the world when we love it."

                              

                                   RABINDRANATH TAGORE (1861-1941)

 

                                                  Who was he?  

Author of Two National Anthems, Winner of one Nobel Prize for Literature

Tagore was a Bengali writer and artist who was the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913.  He is the only author of two national anthems, India's and Bangladesh's.  His literature, poetry, music, painting and plays reshaped Bengali literature and became loved for their spiritual wisdom and ability to convey a light sense that belied deep interest in all that life involves.

Freedom Supporter-- Believer in Independence in Body and Mind

Tagore vigorously supported the cause of Indian freedom from Britain, and learned how to turn his lyrical poems into elegant, short paeans supporting this cause.   His art moved across dance, to drama, to the written page or painted image with the same sense of daring and sublime beauty in every medium.  He even founded a university to support his ideas about what learning could and should be.

Sage and Sun Lion

He was largely viewed as a sage in his latter years, but even at age 16 he was able to publish his first poems under the interesting name: "Sun Lion."   It seems Tagore always knew how to turn a phrase and command attention, but some of his greatest accomplishments come from his ability to transmit wisdom in pithy phrases as the ones you see here.

 

Read more about this truly deserving Nobel prize winner of literature, this one-of-a-kind writer here: 

Today, create your capacity to receive everything, for that is what belongs to you :)