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.
Rabindranath TagoreRead
I've travelled all around the world to see the rivers and the mountains, and I've spent a lot of money. I have gone to great lengths, I have seen everything, but I forgot to see just outside my house a dewdrop on a little blade of grass, a dewdrop which reflects in its convexity the whole universe around you.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes the importance of appreciating the simple beauty found in our immediate surroundings.
Rabindranath Tagore reflects on the human tendency to seek grand experiences and distant travel while often overlooking the simple and profound beauty in everyday life. He suggests that while one might journey to far-flung places to witness nature’s grandeur, true appreciation can be found in the small details, like a dewdrop on a blade of grass, which can encapsulate the vastness of the universe within its delicate surface.
Themes
NatureAppreciationBeautySimplicityReflection
In practice
Example use cases
During a nature retreat, one might reflect on this quote to encourage mindfulness in appreciating the small wonders around us.
More from Rabindranath Tagore
All quotes →Music fills the infinite between two souls. This has been muffled by the mist of our daily habits.
Rabindranath TagoreRead
True deliverance of man is the deliverance from Avidya i.e. ignorance. It is not in destroying anything that is positive and real, for that cannot be possible, but that which is negative, which obstructs our vision of truth.
Rabindranath TagoreRead
The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures. It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth in numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.
Rabindranath TagoreRead
If you cry because the sun has gone out of your life, your tears will prevent you from seeing the stars.
Rabindranath TagoreRead
To be outspoken is easy when you do not wait to speak the complete truth.
Rabindranath TagoreRead
Similar quotes
What is now the foliage moving?_x000D_ _x000D_ Air is still, and hush'd the breeze,_x000D_ _x000D_ Sultriness, this fullness loving,_x000D_ _x000D_ Through the thicket, from the trees._x000D_ _x000D_ Now the eye at once gleams brightly,_x000D_ _x000D_ See! the infant band with mirth_x000D_ _x000D_ Moves and dances nimbly, lightly,_x000D_ _x000D_ As the morning gave it birth,_x000D_ _x000D_ Flutt'ring two and two o'er earth.
Johann Wolfgang Von GoetheRead
Unless we stop the degradation of our oceans, marine ecological systems will begin collapsing and when enough of them fail, the oceans will die. And if the oceans die, then civilization collapses and we all die
Paul WatsonRead
For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche.
Hermann HesseRead
I can't edit the materials I work with. My remit is to work with nature as a whole. I find nature as a whole disturbing. Nature can be harsh – difficult and brutal, as well as beautiful. You couldn't walk five minutes from here without coming across something that is dead or decaying.
Andy GoldsworthyRead
When they turned off, it was still early in the pink and green fields. The fumes of morning, sweet and bitter, sprang up where they walked. The insects ticked softly, their strength in reserve; butterflies chopped the air, going to the east, and the birds flew carelessly and sang by fits and starts, not the way they did in the evening in sustained and drowsy songs.
Eudora WeltyRead
They watched storms out there so distant they could not be heard, the silent lightning flaring sheetwise and the thin black spine of the mountain chain fluttering and sucked away again in the dark. They saw wild horses racing on the plain, pounding their shadows down the night and- leaving in the moonlight a vaporous dust like the palest stain of their passing.
Cormac MccarthyRead