Music fills the infinite between two souls. This has been muffled by the mist of our daily habits.
Rabindranath TagoreRead
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.
Interpretation
This quote contrasts the nature of small wisdom with great wisdom, emphasizing clarity versus complexity.
Rabindranath Tagore uses the metaphor of water to illustrate the difference between small wisdom and great wisdom. Small wisdom is accessible and easily understood, like water in a glass, while great wisdom is profound and often elusive, like the vast, deep sea. This distinction highlights that while small truths can be clear and straightforward, deeper wisdom encompasses more complexity and mystery.
In practice
In a speech about lifelong learning, one might refer to this quote to illustrate the journey of acquiring wisdom.
Music fills the infinite between two souls. This has been muffled by the mist of our daily habits.
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.
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.
If you cry because the sun has gone out of your life, your tears will prevent you from seeing the stars.
To be outspoken is easy when you do not wait to speak the complete truth.
Bees sip honey from flowers and hum their thanks when they leave. The gaudy butterfly is sure that the flowers owe thanks to him.
Then that little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Christ wasn't a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.
I am aware that I am very old now; but I am also aware that I have never been so young as I am now, in spirit, since I was fourteen and entertained Jim Wolf with the wasps. I am only able to perceive that I am old by a mental process; I am altogether unable to feel old in spirit. It is a pity, too, for my lapses from gravity must surely often be a reproach to me. When I am in the company of very young people I always feel that I am one of them, and they probably privately resent it.
Don't you know how much I hero-worshiped you when I was a kid? You were Marie Curie crossed with Emily Bronte crossed with Joan of Arc to me when I was ten. And when i told you that, you said my cultural references were the sign of a colonized mind.
Sometimes it's easy to go where the wind blows, but those that stand firmly planted are forces to be reckoned with.
I believe that reading and writing are the most nourishing forms of meditation anyone has so far found. By reading the writings of the most interesting minds in history, we meditate with our own minds and theirs as well. This to me is a miracle.
If I were given the opportunity to present a gift to the next generation, it would be the ability for each individual to learn to laugh at himself.
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