The Home and the World Quotes

“I am willing to serve my country, but my worship I reserve for Right which is far greater than my country. To worship my country as a god is to bring a curse upon it.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, The Home and the World

“for we women are not only the deities of the household fire, but the flame of the soul itself.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, The Home and the World

“Men can only think. Women have a way of understanding without thinking. Woman was created out of God's own fancy. Man, He had to hammer into shape.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, The Home and the World

“that which is eternal within the moment only becomes shallow if spread out in time.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, The Home and the World

“Today I feel that I shall win through. I have come to the gateway of the simple; I am now content to see things as they are. I have gained freedom myself; I shall allow freedom to others. In my work will be my salvation.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, The Home and the World

“to tyrannize for the country is to tyrannize over the country”
― Rabindranath Tagore, The Home and the World

“If one had to fill in, little by little, the gap between day and night, it would take an eternity to do it. But the sun rises and the darkness is dispelled- a moment is sufficient to overcome an infinite distance.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, The Home and the World

“The greedy man who is fond of his fish stew has no compunction in cutting up the fish according to his need. But the man who loves the fish wants to enjoy it in the water; and if that is impossible he waits on the bank; and even if he comes back home without a sight of it he has the consolation of knowing that the fish is all right. Perfect gain is the best of all; but if that is impossible, then the next best gain is perfect losing.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, The Home and the World

“Woman knows man well enough where he is weak, but she is quite unable to fathom him where he is strong. The fact is that man is as much a mystery to woman as woman is to man. If that were not so, the separation of the sexes would only have been a waste of Nature's energy.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, The Home and the World

“His love for me seemed to overflow my limits by its flood of wealth and service. But my necessity was more for giving than foe receiving; for love is a vagabond, who can make his flowers bloom in the wayside dust, better than in the crystal jars kept in the drawing-room.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, The Home and the World

“If my heart is breaking—let it break! That will not make the world bankrupt—nor even me; for man is so much greater than the things he loses in this life. The very ocean of tears has its other shore, else none would have ever wept.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, The Home and the World

“I have read in books that we are called 'caged birds'. I cannot speak for others, but I had so much in this cage of mine that there was not room for it in the universe- at least that is what I then felt.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, The Home and the World

“God may grand us gifts, but the merit of being able to take and hold them must be our own. Alas for the boons that slip through unworthy hands!”
― Rabindranath Tagore, The Home and the World

“Purity, they imagined, was only becoming in those on whom fortune had not smiled. It is the moon which has room or stains, not the stars.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, The Home and the World

“You are dark, even as the flints are. You must come to violent conflicts and make a noise in order to produce your sparks. But their disconnected flashes merely assist your pride, and not your clear vision.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, The Home and the World

“But when physical appearance evades the scrutiny of our senses and enters the sanctuary of our hearts, then it can forget itself. I know, from my childhood's experience, how devotion is beauty itself, in its inner aspect.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, The Home and the World

“When the knife was busy with my life's most intimate tie, my mind was so clouded with fumes of intoxicating gas that I was not in the least aware of what a cruel thing was happening. Possibly this is woman's nature. When her passion is roused she louses her sensibility for all that is outside it. When, like the river, we women keep to our banks, we give nourishment with all that we have: when we overflow them we destroy with all that we are.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, The Home and the World

“If the cow alone is to be held sacred from slaughter, and not the buffalo, then that is bigotry, not religion.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, The Home and the World

“Perfect gain is the best of all; but if that is impossible, then the next best gain is perfect losing.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, The Home and the World

“My husband used to say, that man and wife are equal in love because of their equal claim on each other. I never argued the point with him, but my heart said that devotion never stands in the way of true equality; it only raises the level of ground meeting. Therefore the joy of the higher equality remains permanent; it never slides down to the vulgar level of triviality.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, The Home and the World

“Freedom, sir," I began unceremoniously, without greeting or inquiry, "freedom is the biggest thing for man. Nothing can be compared to it— nothing at all!" Surprised at my outburst, my master looked up at me in silence. "One can understand nothing from books," I went on. "We read in the scriptures that our desires are bonds, fettering us as well as others. But such words, by themselves, are so empty. It is only when we get to the point of letting the bird out of its cage that we can realize how free the bird has set us. Whatever we cage, shackles us with desire whose bonds are stronger than those of iron chains. I tell you, sir, this is just what the world has failed to understand. They all seek to reform something outside themselves. But reform is wanted only in one's own desires, nowhere else, nowhere else!”
― Rabindranath Tagore, The Home and the World

“I remember I once told him: 'Women's minds are so petty, so crooked!' 'Like the feet of Chinese women,' he replied. 'Has not the pressure of society cramped them into pettiness and crookedness? They are but pawns of the fate which gambles with them. What responsibility have they of their own?”
― Rabindranath Tagore, The Home and the World

“To try to give our infatuation a higher place than Truth is a sign of inherent slavishness. Where our minds are free we find ourselves lost. Our moribund vitality must have for its rider either some fantasy, or someone in authority, or a sanction from the pundits, in order to make it move. So long as we are
impervious to truth and have to be moved by some hypnotic stimulus, we must know that we lack the capacity for self- government. Whatever may be our condition, we shall either need some imaginary ghost or some actual medicine-man to terrorize over us.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, The Home and the World

“Is there any country, sir," pursued the history student, "where submission to Government is not due to fear?" "The freedom that exists in any country," I replied, "may be measured by the extent of this reign of fear. Where its threat is confined to those who would hurt or plunder, there the Government may claim to have freed man from the violence of man. But if fear is to regulate how people are to dress, where they shall trade, or what they must eat, then is man's freedom of will utterly ignored, and manhood destroyed at the root.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, The Home and the World

“চিরকালের জানা যখন এক মুহূর্তে অজানা হয়ে ওঠে তখন সে এক বিভীষিকা।”
― Rabindranath Tagore, The Home and the World

“The fact is that man is as much a mystery to woman as woman is to man. If that were not so, the separation of the sexes would only have been a waste of Nature's energy.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, The Home and the World

“Such lavish devotion made me proud to think that the wealth was all my own which drove you to my gate. But vanity such as this only checks the flow of free surrender in a woman's love. When I sit on he queen's throne and claim homage, then the claim only goes on magnifying itself; it is never satisfied. Can there be any real happiness for a woman in merely feeling that she has power over a man? To surrender one's pride in devotion is woman's only salvation.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, The Home and the World

“Hasta el océano de las lágrimas tiene otra orilla; si así no fuera, nadie habría llorado nunca”
― Rabindranath Tagore, The Home and the World

“এর কিছুদিন পরেই মাস্টারমশায় পঞ্চুকে আমার কাছে নিয়ে এসে উপস্থিত। ব্যাপার কী?

ওদের জমিদার হরিশ কুণ্ডু পঞ্চুকে এক-শো টাকা জরিমানা করেছে।

কেন, ওর অপরাধ কী?

ও বিলিতি কাপড় বেচেছে। ও জমিদারকে গিয়ে হাতে পায়ে ধরে বললে, পরের কাছে ধার-করা টাকায় কাপড় কখানা কিনেছে, এইগুলো বিক্রি হয়ে গেলেই ও এমন কাজ আর কখনো করবে না। জমিদার বললে, সে হচ্ছে না, আমার সামনে কাপড়গুলো পুড়িয়ে ফেল্‌, তবে ছাড়া পাবি। ও থাকতে না পেরে হঠাৎ বলে ফেললে, আমার তো সে সামর্থ্য নেই, আমি গরিব ; আপনার যথেষ্ট আছে, আপনি দাম দিয়ে কিনে নিয়ে পুড়িয়ে ফেলুন। শুনে জমিদার লাল হয়ে উঠে বললে, হারামজাদা, কথা কইতে শিখেছ বটে— লাগাও জুতি। এই বলে এক চোট অপমান তো হয়েই গেল, তার পরে এক-শো টাকা জরিমানা।– এরাই সন্দীপের পিছনে পিছনে চীৎকার করে বেড়ায়, বন্দেমাতরং! এরা দেশের সেবক!”
― Rabindranath Tagore, The Home and the World

“জীবনটাকে কেঁদে ভাসিয়ে দেওয়ার চেয়ে হেসে উড়িয়ে দেওয়াই ভালো।”
― Rabindranath Tagore, The Home and the World