The full value of my life does not all go to buy my narrow domestic world; its great commerce does not stand or fall with some petty success or failure in the bartering of my personal joys and sorrows.
 Rabindranath Tagore, The Home and the World (1916). copy citation

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Author Rabindranath Tagore
Source The Home and the World
Topic success failure
Date 1916
Language English
Reference
Note Translated by Surendranath Tagore
Weblink http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/7166/pg7166-images.html

Context

“If Bimal should say she is not mine, what care I where my Society wife may be? Suffering there must be; but I must save myself, by any means in my power, from one form of self-torture: I must never think that my life loses its value because of any neglect it may suffer. The full value of my life does not all go to buy my narrow domestic world; its great commerce does not stand or fall with some petty success or failure in the bartering of my personal joys and sorrows. The time has come when I must divest Bimala of all the ideal decorations with which I decked her. It was owing to my own weakness that I indulged in such idolatry. I was too greedy. I created an angel of Bimala, in order to exaggerate my own enjoyment.” source