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
A message came from my youth of vanished days, saying, 'I wait for you among the quivering of unborn May, where smiles ripen for tears and hours ache with songs unsung.' It says, 'Come to me across the worn-out track of age, through the gates of death. For dreams fade, hopes fail, the fathered fruits of the year decay, but I am the eternal truth, and you shall meet me again and again in your voyage of life from shore to shore.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects on the transient nature of life and the enduring quest for truth and connection beyond mortality.
Rabindranath Tagore's quote meditates on the passage of time and the inevitable fading of dreams and hopes as life progresses. It conveys a sense of longing for deeper truths and connections that transcend the physical world, suggesting that while our earthly experiences may be ephemeral, there is an eternal aspect of existence that binds us together across time. The imagery of 'quivering of unborn May' symbolizes potential and new beginnings, while the encouragement to 'come to me' speaks to the universal desire for reunion and understanding in the journey of life.
Themes
LifeTruthTimeConnectionJourney
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the importance of cherishing relationships, I could use this quote to emphasize the enduring nature of love.
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
Even though we have lost yardsticks by which to measure, and rules under which to subsume the particular, a being whose essence is a beginning may have enough of origin within himself to understand without preconceived categories and to judge without the set of customary rules which is morality.
Hannah ArendtRead
Man only becomes independent of this physical world when he learns to consider the objects around him as symbols. He must, for this reason, seek to acquire a moral relationship to them.
Rudolf SteinerRead
The Church is a virgin, the bride of one Spouse, Who is Christ, and this Church does not allow herself to be violated by any error; so that, throughout the whole world there may be for us one uncorruptedness of a single chaste communion.
Pope Leo IRead
Our passions do not live apart in locked chambers but dress in their small wardrobe of notions, bring their provisions to a common table and mess together, feeding out of the common store according to their appetite.
George EliotRead
Diplomats are just as essential to starting a war as soldiers are for finishing it... You take diplomacy out of war, and the thing would fall flat in a week.
Will RogersRead
Did you, too, O friend, suppose democracy was only for elections, for politics, and for a party name? I say democracy is only of use there that it may pass on and come to its flower and fruit in manners, in the highest forms of interaction between people, and their beliefs - in religion, literature, colleges and schools- democracy in all public and private life.
Walt WhitmanRead