Skip to content
quotesby

In love all the contradictions of existence merge themselves and are lost. Only in love are unity and duality not at variance. Love must be one and two at the same time. Only love is motion and rest in one. Our heart ever changes its place till it finds love, and then it has its rest. But this rest itself is an intense form of activity where utter quiescence and unceasing energy meet at the same point in love. In love, loss and gain are harmonised. In its balance-sheet, credit and debit accounts are in the same column, and gifts are added to gains. In this wonderful festival of creation, this great ceremony of self-sacrifice of God, the lover constantly gives himself up to gain himself in love. Indeed, love is what brings together and inseparably connects both the act of abandoning and that of receiving.

Rabindranath Tagore#17

LoveUnityPeaceContradiction

About this quote

What does it mean?
Love resolves contradictions like motion and rest or loss and gain, uniting opposing forces.
In plain terms
Love unites opposing forces like motion and rest.
What can you take from it?
Let love harmonize your contradictions.

Where it applies

  • relationships
  • inner conflict

Putting it to work

  • embrace paradox
  • seek harmony

Questions to consider

  • What contradictions exist in your life?
  • How does love change your view?

Another view

Love alone cannot solve practical conflicts.

More from Rabindranath Tagore

  1. We never can have a true view of man unless we have a love for him. Civilisation must be judged and prized, not by the amount of power it has developed, but by…

    Permalink to quote #16
  2. In love, at one of its poles you find the personal, and at the other the impersonal. At one you have the positive assertion - Here I am; at the other the equal…

    Permalink to quote #18
  3. Man is not entirely an animal. He aspires to a spiritual vision, which is the vision of the whole truth. This gives him the highest delight, because it reveals…

    Permalink to quote #15

Related quotes

  1. 'Today we stand on the threshold of violence, disunity and hatred and ongoing for peace, non violence, unity and love. Alas! How I long to behold my Ratu Sukun…

    Ratu Sir Lala SukunaRatu Sir Lala Sukuna quote #5
  2. In love all the contradiction of existence merge themselves and are lost. Only in love are unity and duality not at variance. Love must be one and two at the s…

    Rabindranath TagoreRabindranath Tagore quote #77
  3. In the night we stumble over things and become acutely conscious of their separateness, but the day reveals the unity which embraces them. And the man whose in…

    Rabindranath TagoreRabindranath Tagore quote #81