Rabindranath Tagore

1861–1941 · Bengali poet, essayist & composer; 1913 Nobel laureate in Literature

Rabindranath Tagore was the towering figure of modern Bengali literature and the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature (1913), largely on the strength of his own English translation of Gitanjali. Stray Birds (1916) is a collection of several hundred brief, epigrammatic verses he rendered into English from his Bengali. His genuinely aphoristic style makes him an easy magnet for both real short quotes and later paraphrases.

Traced to source

2 quotes we’ve traced to Rabindranath Tagore

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

Verified

“You can't cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water”

Attributed

Not actually Rabindranath Tagore

Often misattributed to Rabindranath Tagore

Famous lines widely pinned on Rabindranath Tagore that we’ve traced to someone else.

“Don't limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time”

actually Anonymous (Arabic & Rabbinic proverb tradition)

Did they really say it?

Thought Rabindranath Tagore said something else?

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