Rabindranath Tagore Jayanti 2025: Top 20 quotes by the ‘Bard of Bengal' on his 164th birthday

Mint

09-05-2025

Rabindranath Tagore Jayanti 2025 commemorates the 164th birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore, one of India's most revered literary figures.
Celebrated annually on the 25th day of the Bengali month of Boishakh (usually April or May), this day honours his extraordinary contributions to literature, music, art, and education.
Composer of India's national anthem, 'Jana Gana Mana', Tagore was a polymath who bridged cultures through his works.
Born in 1861, he played a leading role in Indian cultural renaissance and came to be recognized as one of the architects of modern India alongside Mahatama Gandhi.
Tagore is renowned for his contribution to the field of Bengali literature and politics. His poems, shorts stories, songs, plays, and novels are still revered and analysed in different fields of art.
Rabindranath Tagore is called the 'Bard of Bengal', much like William Shakespeare is called the 'Bard of Avon', because of his monumental influence on Bengali literature, music, and culture.
As a prolific poet, composer, and social reformer, he revolutionised Bengali literature and introduced it to the world, earning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913.
He was the first non-European to receive the Nobel Prize for his contribution to world literature.
His compositions, known as Rabindra Sangeet, remain a cornerstone of Bengali music. Tagore's works, blending traditional Bengali culture with modern ideas, also inspired the Bengali Renaissance and India's nationalist movements.
He also penned the national anthem for Bangladesh. Some of his other notable works include Gitanjali, Chokher Bali, Post Master, Kabuliwallah, Nastanirh. '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...'
'The problem is not how to wipe out all differences, but how to unite with all differences intact.'
'Reach high, for stars lie hidden in you. Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal.'
'You can't cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.'
'If you cry because the sun has gone out of your life, your tears will prevent you from seeing the stars.'
'Everything comes to us that belongs to us if we create the capacity to receive it.'
'Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high Where knowledge is free."
'The most important lesson that man can learn from life is not that there is pain in this world, but that it is possible for him to transmute it into joy.'
'A lamp can only light another lamp when it continues to burn in its own flame.' 'The main object of teaching is not to give explanations, but to knock at the doors of the mind.'
'The small wisdom is like water in a glass: clear, transparent, pure. The great wisdom is like the water in the sea: dark, mysterious, impenetrable.'
'You can't cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.'
'Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time like dew on the tip of a leaf.'
'Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark.'
'The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.'
'I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.'
'The most important thing is to find out what you are meant to do in the world and to do it.'
'Don't limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time.'
'Love is an endless act of forgiveness. Love is the secret key to understanding, and the capacity to forgive is its essence.'
'The song I came to sing remains unsung to this day. I have spent my days in stringing and unstringing my instrument.'
'Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers, but to be fearless in facing them.'