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
The real frienship is like fluorescence, it shines better when everything has darken.
Interpretation
True friendship reveals its strength during tough times.
Rabindranath Tagore's quote emphasizes that genuine friendship is most valuable and visibly shines during difficult moments in life. Like fluorescence that becomes more apparent in darkness, true friends reveal their loyalty and support when challenges arise, proving that real bonds are tested and strengthened in adversity.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of relationships, I would quote Tagore to highlight the strength of true friendship.
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.
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.
They might not need me; but they might. I'll let my head be just in sight; a smile as small as mine might be precisely their necessity.
Friendship is a sheltering tree.
Friends are all souls that we've known in other lives. We're drawn to each other. Even if I have only known them a day, it doesn't matter. I'm not going to wait till I have known them for two years, because anyway, we must have met somewhere before, you know.
Those were happier days, when there was still close friendship at times between folk of different race, even between Dwarves and Elves.' It was not the fault of the Dwarves that the friendship waned,' said Gimli. I have not heard that it was the fault of the Elves,' said Legolas. I have heard both,' said Gandalf[.]
We were not just competitors and colleagues, we were friends. We had a lot of opportunities to reflect on this in the last year. It was a competitive brotherhood.
Let us drink together, fellows, as we did in days of yore. And still enjoy the golden hours that Fortune has in store; The absent friends remembered be, in all thatβs sung or said, And Love immortal consecrate the memory of the dead.
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