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
Today the insatiable quest for profit promotes the new slavery. In bewildering ways, the new is more pernicious than the old, for the New American Slave is told he is free, and he clings to that myth as if his life depended upon it, a suspicion that cannot be totally ignored.
Gerry SpenceRead
The foundation of worship in the heart is not emotional ("I feel full of worship" or "The atmosphere is so worshipful"). Actually, it is theological. Worship is not something we "work up," it is something that "comes down" to us, from the character of God.
Sinclair B. FergusonRead
The most interesting thing in the world is another human being who wonders, suffers and raises the questions that have bothered him to the last day of his life, knowing he will never get the answers.
Will DurantRead
Thinking about time is to acknowledge two contradictory certainties: that our outward lives are governed by the seasons and the clock; that our inward lives are governed by something much less regular-an imaginative impulse cutting through the dictates of daily time, and leaving us free to ignore the boundaries of here and now and pass like lightning along the coil of pure time, that is, the circle of the universe and whatever it does or does not contain.
Jeanette WintersonRead
It is wrong to bear children out of need, wrong to use a child to alleviate loneliness, wrong to provide purpose in life by reproducing another copy of oneself. It is wrong also to seek immortality by spewing one's germ into the future as though sperm contains your consciousness!
Irvin D. YalomRead
The essence of saintliness is total acceptance of the present moment, _x000D_ harmony with things as they happen.
Sri Nisargadatta MaharajRead