For the current of our spiritual life creeds, rituals and channels that may thwart or help, according to their fixity or openness. When a symbol or spiritual idea becomes rigidly elaborate in its construction, it supplants the idea which it should support.

Rabindranath Tagore

A teacher can never truly teach unless he is still learning himself. A lamp can never light another lamp unless it continues to burn its own flame. The teacher who has come to the end of his subject, who has no living traffic with his knowledge but merely repeats his lesson to his students, can only load their minds, he cannot quicken them.

Rabindranath Tagore

light teaching teacher

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high Where knowledge is free.

Rabindranath Tagore

independence india mind

It is very simple to be happy, but it is very difficult to be simple.

Rabindranath Tagore

humor simple funny

Go not to the temple to put flowers upon the feet of God, first fill your own house with the fragrance of love. Go not to the temple to light candles before the altar of God, first remove the darkness of sin from your heart. Go not to the temple to bow down your head in prayer, first learn to bow in humility before your fellow men. Go not to the temple to pray on bended knees, first bend down to lift someone who is down trodden. Go not to the temple to ask for forgiveness for your sins, first forgive from your heart those who have sinned against you.

Rabindranath Tagore

flower prayer heart

The one who plants trees, knowing that he will never sit in their shade, has at least started to understand the meaning of life.

Rabindranath Tagore

meaning-of-life knowing tree

Reach high, for stars lie hidden in you. Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal.

Rabindranath Tagore

motivational inspirational life

Everything comes to us that belongs to us if we create the capacity to receive it.

Rabindranath Tagore

encouragement inspiring life

If you cry because the sun has gone out of your life, your tears will prevent you from seeing the stars.

Rabindranath Tagore

change motivational inspirational

A lamp can only light another lamp when it continues to burn in its own flame.

Rabindranath Tagore

reading education writing

The highest education is that which does not merely give us information but makes our life in harmony with all existence.

Rabindranath Tagore

education inspirational life

... let us unite, not in spite of our differences, but through them. For differences can never be wiped away, and life would be so much the poorer without them. Let all human races keep their own personalities, and yet come together, not in a uniformity that is dead, but in a unity that is living.

Rabindranath Tagore

differences race personality

I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.

Rabindranath Tagore

insperational inspirational commitment

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.

Rabindranath Tagore

pain joy men

Who are you, reader, reading my poems an hundred years hence? I cannot send you one single flower from this wealth of the spring, one single streak of gold from yonder clouds. Open your doors and look abroad. From your blossoming garden gather fragrant memories of the vanished flowers of an hundred years before. In the joy of your heart may you feel the living joy that sang one spring morning, sending its glad voice across a hundred years.

Rabindranath Tagore

spring morning memories

Let not the hours pass by in the dark. Kindle the lamp of love with thy life.

Rabindranath Tagore

lamps hours dark

Do not say, 'It is morning,' and dismiss it with a name of yesterday. See it for the first time as a newborn child that has no name.

Rabindranath Tagore

good-morning hypocrite children

Let my love like sunlight surround you and yet give you illumined freedom.

Rabindranath Tagore

rainy-day sunlight giving

Love is an endless mystery, because there is no reasonable cause that could explain it.

Rabindranath Tagore

mystery causes love-is

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

Rabindranath Tagore

positivity motivational adventure

I have listened

Rabindranath Tagore

eye soul world