Rabindranath Tagore was born in Calcutta in 1861 to a family of culture and means, where he received an extensive, though unorthodox, education, much of which would later involve extensive traveling with his father. He had a passion for learning English at an early age, as well as an interest in writing, which he began at eight years of age and was regularly publishing poetry and essays in magazines only a few years later. The combination of Bengali and English literature that Tagore regularly consumed resulted in creating a unique literary voice, which his audiences devoured. He would go on to become the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913.

Thought Relics, first published in 1921, is a collection of untitled verses that bridge the gap between meditations and prose. Originally written in English by Tagore, these poetic aphorisms are a dreamy blend of mysticism, philosophy, introspection, and spiritual discovery.