Rabindranath Tagore

“I cannot choose the best. The best chooses me.”

“You can't cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.”

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

“Let me think that there is one among those stars that guides my life through the dark unknown.”

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

“He who is too busy doing good finds no time to be good.”

“The sparrow is sorry for the peacock at the burden of its tail.”

“The flower which is single need not envy the thorns that are numerous.”

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

“Man goes into the noisy crowd to drown his own clamour of silence.”

“Sorrow is hushed into peace in my heart like the evening among the silent trees.”

“Gratefulness is the music of the heart, when its chords are swept by the breeze of kindness.”

“I have on my table a violin string. It is free. I twist one end of it and it responds. It is free. But it is not free to do what a violin string is supposed to do — to produce music. So I take it, fix it in my violin and tighten it until it is taut. Only then is it free to be a violin string.”

“The sands in your way beg for your song and your movement, dancing water. Will you carry the burden of their lameness?”

“The mighty desert is burning for the love of a blade of grass who shakes her head and laughs and flies away.”

“I have dipped the vessel of my heart into this silent hour; it has filled with love.”

“Some unseen fingers, like an idle breeze, are playing upon my heart the music of the ripples.”

“The cobweb pretends to catch dew-drops and catches flies.”

“Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high; where knowledge is free.”