Rabindranath Tagore—born Rabindranath Thakur in India in 1861—was a man of many talents. He was a poet, writer, philosopher, playwright, social reformer, painter and composer, per Quartz and Britannica. With such a rich history of writing beautiful words, even winning a Nobel Prize in Literature later on, it’s a no-brainer that Tagore is our quote of the day today.
He was from the Bengal province of India and was born into a wealthy family. He was also mostly self-taught in all he did, according to Quartz. As Britannica reported, Tagore introduced Indian culture to the West—and Western culture to India—and is “generally regarded as the outstanding creative artist of early 20th-century India.”
He popularized a new form of prose and poetry in Bengali literature, shaking things up at the time. He was also the first non-European and lyricist to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913, as well as the first Asian to win a Nobel Prize in any category. He won thanks to his “profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse, by which, with consummate skill, he has made his poetic thought, expressed in his own English words, a part of the literature of the West,” according to the Nobel Prize’s website.
As mentioned, Tagore was a social reformer, very interested and associated with non-violent social change. He was friends with Mahatma Gandhi and supported Indian independence. And he was also a talented songwriter who penned the national anthem for India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka (along with over 2,000 songs in general, Quartz reported).
With all that said, Tagore is a man of many words, which he put into many forms throughout his life, before dying in 1941. Our quote today is something he said about determination, not letting life pass you by and taking that leap into the unknown.
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Quote of the Day by Tagore
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“You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.”
This quote appeared in the 1968 book, Wit and Wisdom of Gandhi, Nehru, Tagore: Being a treasury of over ten thousand invaluable and inspiring thoughts, views, and obervations on about eight hundred subjects of popular interest, collected from the speeches and writings of these three great leaders of modern India by N. B. Sen. A doozy of a title, this was a collection of writings, thoughts and sayings from those three men—Gandhi, Tagore and Jawaharlal Nehru—as the long subtitle stated.
In the “Adventure” section of the book, Tagore is quoted as saying: “Plunge into the deep without fear, with the gladness of April in your heart. / You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water. Don’t let yourself indulge in vain wishes. / When we are out for adventure, we must leave behind all fears, all quatrains, all Pundits and all Scriptures. / To set out and go forth was the important thing.”
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Looking at just this line of Tagore’s quote, he’s saying that if you just stand in one place, looking out at the sea, you’re never going to cross it. While that’s obvious in its literal meaning, what he’s really saying is that you need to have ambition and determination to do things in life. You’ll always be where you’ve always been if you don’t do something.
In its non-literal form, this means that if you have dreams or desires, you need to make plans to go achieve them and act on them. You can’t wish for or hope that someone comes and does something for you.
Whether you want a new job, you have a cool idea, you want to go on a bucket list trips or you want to finally deep-clean your bedroom, you need to make a plan of action and do it. You need to get up and do more than just stare. Life is constantly moving and changing, so if you’re sedentary in your motives, it will all pass you by.
Sure, there can be hangups, and fear can sometimes hold us back. But you just have to remind yourself that if you don’t find a boat, call for help or build a bridge, you’re never going to cross that sea. You’ll never get anywhere by standing still, literally and figuratively.
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More Quotes from Tagore
“If you cry because the sun has gone out of your life, your tears will prevent you from seeing the stars.”“Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.”“Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers, but to be fearless in facing them. Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain, but for the heart to conquer it.”“It is very simple to be happy, but it is very difficult to be simple.”“Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark.”“The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.”“April, like a child, writes hieroglyphs on dust with flowers, wipes them away and forgets.”Up Next:
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