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.
Rabindranath Tagore · Gitanjali
Courage & motivation
“Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high; Where…”
- Author
- Rabindranath Tagore
- Work
- Gitanjali
- Year
- 1912
- Chapter / part
- 35
- Length
- 90 words
- Source
- Project Gutenberg eBook #7164
Public domain. This passage is in the public domain. Rabindranath Tagore died in 1941, more than 70 years ago, and the work was first published in 1912. You can copy, print, read aloud or sell it without asking permission; a credit is kind but not required. The text is copied word for word from the Project Gutenberg edition linked here.
Related passages
OUT of the night that covers me,Black as the Pit from pole to pole,I thank whatever gods may beFor my unconquerable soul.In the fell clutch of circumstanceI have not winced nor cried aloud.Under the bludgeonings of chanceMy head is bloody, but unbowed.Beyond this place of wrath and tearsLooms but the Horror of the shade,And yet the menace of the yearsFinds, and shall find, me unafraid.It matters not how strait the gate,How charged with punishments the scroll,I am the master of my fate:I am the captain of my soul.
I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning how to sail my ship.
Louisa May AlcottLittle Women, 1868 · Chapter Forty-Four: My Lord and Lady
Passage page · Read the full text
Passage page · Read the full text
No, we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
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