The birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore is celebrated on 7 May. He is the writer of India’s national anthem “Jana Gana Mana” and is known as one of the greatest revolutionaries India has produced. 

He was born on 7 May, 1861. He is also widely known for authoring Gitanjali and become the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in literature. In 1915, he was awarded a knighthood by King George but renounced the title in 1919 after the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre. 

Rabindranath Tagore Jayanti 2022: Famous and Motivational Quotes by the Bard of Bengal

1. “Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark.”

2. “That side of our existence whose direction is towards the infinite that seeks not wealth, but freedom and joy.”

3.  “I have spent a fortune traveling to distant shores and looked at lofty mountains and boundless oceans, and yet I haven’t found time to take a few steps from my house

4. “Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.”

5. “Gray hairs are signs of wisdom if you hold your tongue, speak and they are but hairs, as in the young.”

6.  “I slept and dreamt that life was a joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was a joy.”

7. “We read the world wrong and say that it deceives us.”

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

9. “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.”

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

11.  “If I can’t make it through one door, I’ll go through another door or I’ll make a door. Something terrific will come no matter how dark the present.”

12. “Our nature is obscured by work done by the compulsion of want or fear. The mother reveals herself in the service of her children, so our true freedom is not the freedom from action but freedom in action, which can only be attained in the work of love.” 

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

14. “When we accept any discipline for ourselves, we try to avoid everything except that which is necessary for our purpose; it is this purposefulness, which belongs to the adult mind, that we force upon school children. We say, “Never keep your mind aler” 

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

16. “Let your life lightly dance on the edges of time like dew on the tip of a leaf.”

17. “By plucking her petals you do not gather the beauty of the flower.”

18. “The greed of gain has no time or limit to its capaciousness. Its one object is to produce and consume. It has pity neither for beautiful nature nor for living human beings. It is ruthlessly ready without a moment’s hesitation to crush beauty and life.”

19. “Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.”

20. “We come nearest to the great when we are great in humility.”

Rabindranath Tagore Jayanti 2022: Poems by the Bard of Bengal

1.

Waiting
 The song I came to sing
remains unsung to this day.
I have spent my days in stringing
and in unstringing my instrument.

The time has not come true,
the words have not been rightly set;
only there is the agony
of wishing in my heart…..

I have not seen his face,
nor have I listened to his voice;
only I have heard his gentle footsteps
from the road before my house…..

But the lamp has not been lit
and I cannot ask him into my house;
I live in the hope of meeting with him;
but this meeting is not yet.

2. 
Gitanjali
Thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure. This frail vessel thou emptiest again and again, and fillest it ever with fresh life.

This little flute of a reed thou hast carried over hills and dales, and hast breathed through it melodies eternally new.

At the immortal touch of thy hands my little heart loses its limits in joy and gives birth to utterance ineffable.

Thy infinite gifts come to me only on these very small hands of mine. Ages pass, and still thou pourest, and still there is room to fill.

3. 
On The Nature of Love
The night is black and the forest has no end;
a million people thread it in a million ways.
We have trysts to keep in the darkness, but where
or with whom – of that we are unaware.
But we have this faith – that a lifetime’s bliss
will appear any minute, with a smile upon its lips.
Scents, touches, sounds, snatches of songs
brush us, pass us, give us delightful shocks.
Then peradventure there’s a flash of lightning:
whomever I see that instant I fall in love with.
I call that person and cry: `This life is blest!
for your sake such miles have I traversed!’
All those others who came close and moved off
in the darkness – I don’t know if they exist or not.

4. 
Paper Boats
Day by day I float my paper boats one by one down the running
stream.
In big black letters I write my name on them and the name of
the village where I live.
I hope that someone in some strange land will find them and
know who I am.
I load my little boats with shiuli flower from our garden, and
hope that these blooms of the dawn will be carried safely to land
in the night.

5. 
Where The Mind Is Without Fear
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee.