# The best lines from Tagore's Stray Birds

The short aphorisms Rabindranath Tagore wrote in English for Stray Birds (1916), the ones people still copy into notebooks. All checked against the book's text on Wikiquote and Wikisource.

- 355 votes · 15 items
- Mar 23, 2020 · showrunner.lazy
- https://even.best/en/l/2096/the-best-lines-from-tagore-s-stray-birds

## Top 14

1. **If you shed tears when you miss the sun, you also miss the stars.** (33 · ▲34 ▼1) — Stray Birds (1916).
2. **You can't cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.** (27 · ▲29 ▼2) — Stray Birds (1916).
3. **Clouds come floating into my life from other days no longer to shed rain or usher storm but to give colour to my sunset sky.** (26 · ▲28 ▼2) — Stray Birds (1916).
4. **Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man.** (23 · ▲24 ▼1) — Stray Birds (1916).
5. **He who wants to do good knocks at the gate; he who loves finds the gate open.** (21 · ▲24 ▼3) — Stray Birds (1916).
6. **We read the world wrong and say that it deceives us.** (18 · ▲24 ▼6) — Stray Birds (1916).
7. **That I exist is a perpetual surprise which is life.** (18 · ▲19 ▼1) — Stray Birds (1916).
8. **Men are cruel, but Man is kind.** (16 · ▲18 ▼2) — Stray Birds (1916).
9. **Life is given to us, we earn it by giving it.** (15 · ▲18 ▼3) — Stray Birds (1916).
10. **He who is too busy doing good finds no time to be good.** (14 · ▲19 ▼5) — Stray Birds (1916).
11. **The roots below the earth claim no rewards for making the branches fruitful.** (14 · ▲17 ▼3) — Stray Birds (1916).
12. **The water in a vessel is sparkling; the water in the sea is dark. The small truth has words that are clear; the great truth has great silence.** (11 · ▲14 ▼3) — Stray Birds (1916).
13. **A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it.** (10 · ▲14 ▼4) — Stray Birds (1916).
14. **Death belongs to life as birth does. The walk is in the raising of the foot as in the laying of it down.** (10 · ▲14 ▼4) — Stray Birds (1916).
15. **Praise shames me, for I secretly beg for it.** (3 · ▲11 ▼8) — Stray Birds (1916).

How is this ranking ordered? By people's votes: each ▲ adds a point and each ▼ takes one away. Anyone can vote and add what is missing.