Rabindranath Tagore (1861 – 1941)
Also known as Rabi Thakur, was a Bengali philosopher, poet, and winner of the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913.
In “The Religion of the Forest,” Tagore wrote about the influence that the forest dwellers of ancient India had on classical Indian literature. The forests are sources of water and the storehouses of a biodiversity that can teach us the lessons of democracy—of leaving space for others while drawing sustenance from the common web of life. Tagore saw unity with nature as the highest stage of human evolution.
O Woman, you are not merely the handiwork of God, but also of men; these are ever endowing you with beauty from their own hearts … You are one-half woman and one-half dream.
While God waits for his temple to be built of love, men bring stones.
Knowledge is partial, because our intellect is an instrument, it is only a part of us, it can give us information about things which can be divided and analysed, and whose properties can be classified part by part. But Brahma is perfect, and knowledge which is partial can never be a knowledge of him.
Please is frail like a dewdrop, while it laughs it dies. But sorrow is strong and abiding. Let sorrowful love wake in your eyes.
If you shed tears when you miss the sun, you also miss the stars.
The child ever dwells in the mystery of ageless time,
unobscured by the dust of history.
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
My heart, the bird of the wilderness, has found its sky in your eyes.