Rabindranath Tagore Death Anniversary: 8 Quotes, Verses To Remember 'Gurudev'

Rabindranath Tagore Quotes: Today, we commemorate the 81st death anniversary of this great Bengali poet and playwriter who will indeed continue to live through his works for generations to come.

Portrait of Indian author and poet Rabindranath Tagore, circa 1935. ( Image Source :Getty )

Rabindranath Tagore Quotes: Rabindranath Tagore was a Bengali polymath who used contextual modernism to reshape Bengali literature and music, as well as Indian art, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913 as the author of Gitanjali and its "profoundly sensitive, fresh, and beautiful verse." 

Today, we commemorate the 81st death anniversary of this great Bengali poet and playwriter who will indeed continue to live through his works for generations to come. 

On his death anniversary, let us read some inspirational quotes written by ‘Gurudev’.

• “Most people believe the mind to be a mirror, more or less accurately reflecting the world outside them, not realizing on the contrary that the mind is itself the principal element of creation.”
• “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.”
• “Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.”
• “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.”
• "If you cry because the sun has gone out of your life, your tears will prevent you from seeing the stars."
• "Love is the only reality and it is not a mere sentiment. It is the ultimate truth that lies at the heart of creation."
• “Patriotism cannot be our final spiritual shelter; my refuge is humanity. I will not buy glass for the price of diamonds, and I will never allow patriotism to triumph over humanity as long as I live.”

Tagore was much ahead of his time and was the torch bearer of Bengali literature. He was a visionary and the torchbearer of Bengali literature. He has beautifully penned any emotion, be it joy, sorrow, love, or any other, in his works.

One of his famous verses goes as follows:

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 into ever-widening thought and action-

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

Tagore had himself laid out plans for his last rites: "I want to depart under the open sky in the bountiful land of Shantiniketan, in the midst of my children. There will be no cheers, no frenzied devotion. The only gathering will be that of the calm, still nature. I will have my peace from the synergy of nature and my loved ones. My body will be merged with Shantiniketan — this is my wish."

Despite his reservations, Rabindranath Tagore was given a hero's farewell by those who loved him and whose souls he had touched through his music and poetry.