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Rabindranath Tagore quotes

Rabindranath Tagore (1861 to 1941) was a Bengali poet, the author of India's national anthem and, in 1913, the first Asian winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. He translated much of his own work into English. The lines below are his own English words, with the book named.

From Gitanjali (1912)

  • Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high.

    Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali (1912), poem 35

  • Thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure.

    Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali (1912), poem 1

  • Leave this chanting and singing and telling of beads!

    Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali (1912), poem 11

From Stray Birds (1916)

  • If you shed tears when you miss the sun, you also miss the stars.

    Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds (1916)

  • What you are you do not see, what you see is your shadow.

    Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds (1916)

  • Man is a born child, his power is the power of growth.

    Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds (1916)

  • The stars are not afraid to appear like fireflies.

    Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds (1916)

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

    Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds (1916)

  • We read the world wrong and say that it deceives us.

    Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds (1916)

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

    Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds (1916)

  • Let life be beautiful like summer flowers and death like autumn leaves.

    Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds (1916)

  • By plucking her petals you do not gather the beauty of the flower.

    Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds (1916)

  • Men are cruel, but Man is kind.

    Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds (1916)

  • Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.

    Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds (1916)

From other books

  • Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers but to be fearless in facing them.

    Rabindranath Tagore, Fruit-Gathering (1916)

  • The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.

    Rabindranath Tagore, Fireflies (1928)

  • Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark.

    Rabindranath Tagore, Fireflies (1928)

The books these lines come from

Tagore wrote in Bengali and then made his own English versions, which are freer and plainer than the originals. Gitanjali ("Song Offerings"), a book of prose poems, was published in English in 1912 with an introduction by the Irish poet W. B. Yeats, and the Nobel Prize followed in 1913. Stray Birds (1916) and Fireflies (1928) are collections of sayings of a line or two each, which is why they are quoted so often on cards and posters.

"Where the mind is without fear"

Poem 35 of Gitanjali is a prayer for the poet's country, written while India was under British rule. Its single long sentence lists what a free nation should be, with knowledge free, the world not broken into fragments by "narrow domestic walls", and words coming "from the depth of truth", and ends with the plea "Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake." It is recited in schools across India on Independence Day and Republic Day, and the full text is on our sister site at Poems: English classics.

Tagore and two national anthems

Tagore wrote "Jana Gana Mana", which was adopted as India's national anthem in 1950, and "Amar Shonar Bangla", which became the national anthem of Bangladesh. He also founded the school at Santiniketan that grew into Visva-Bharati University.

Using a Tagore line

Give his name and the book. If a "Tagore quote" names no book, check it: his English works are in the public domain and searchable.

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