Maurice Maeterlinck Quotes

When we lose one we love, our bitterest tears are called forth by the memory of hours when we loved not enough. If we always had smiled on the one who is gone, there would be no despair in our grief; and some sweetness would cling to our tears, reminiscent of virtues and happiness. For our recollections of veritable love—which indeed is the act of virtue containing all others—call from our eyes the same sweet, tender tears as those most beautiful hours wherein memory was born.

~ Maurice Maeterlinck

(there is) no other means of escaping from one's consciousness than to deny it, to look upon it as an organic disease of the terrestrial intelligence - a disease which we must endeavor to cure by an action which must appear to us an action of violent and willful madness, but which, on the other side of our appearances, is probably an action of health. (Of Immortality)

~ Maurice Maeterlinck

It is sad to love and be unloved, but sadder still to be unable to love.

~ Maurice Maeterlinck

A thought that is almost beautiful – a thought that you speak not, but that you cherish within you at this moment, will irradiate you as though you were a transparent vase.

~ Maurice Maeterlinck

However imperfect our conception of virtue, still let us cling to it; for a moment’s forgetfulness exposes us to all the malignant forces from without. The simplest lie to myself, buried though it may be in the silence of my soul, may yet be as dangerous to my inner liberty as an act of treachery on the marketplace. Widfom and Destiny

~ Maurice Maeterlinck

When once misfortune enters a house, silence is in vain.

~ Maurice Maeterlinck

Have we,” asks Claude de Saint-Martin, the great ‘unknown philosopher,’ “have we advanced one step further on the radiant path of enlightenment, that leads to the simplicity of men?” Let us wait in silence: perhaps ere long we shall be conscious of “the murmur of the gods.

~ Maurice Maeterlinck

Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together ... Speech is too often ... the act of quite stifling and suspending thought, so that there is none to conceal ... Speech is of Time, silence is of Eternity ... It is idle to think that, by means of words, any real communication can ever pass from one man to another ...

~ Maurice Maeterlinck

We should tell ourselves, once and for all, that it is the first duty of the soul to become as happy, complete, independent, and great as lies in its power. Herein is no egoism, or pride. To become effectually generous and sincerely humble there must be within us a confident, tranquil, and clear comprehension of all that we owe to ourselves.

~ Maurice Maeterlinck

Our reason may prove what it will: our reason is only a feeble ray that has issued from Nature.

~ Maurice Maeterlinck

Of what avail are my loftiest thoughts if I have ceased to exist?” there are some will ask; to whom others, it may be, will answer, “What becomes of myself if all that I love in my heart and my spirit must die, that my life may be saved?” And are not almost all the morals, and heroism, and virtue of man summed up in that single choice?

~ Maurice Maeterlinck

But cannot we live as though we always loved? It was this that the saints and heroes did, this and nothing more.

~ Maurice Maeterlinck

I believe that poems die the moment they are outwardly expressed.

~ Maurice Maeterlinck

The angels that dry our eyes bear the form and the features of all we have said and thought—above all, of what we have done, prior to the hour of misfortune.

~ Maurice Maeterlinck

To learn to love, one must first learn to see.

~ Maurice Maeterlinck

Unless we close our eyes we are always deceived.

~ Maurice Maeterlinck

Justice is the very last thing of all wherewith the universe concerns itself. It is equilibrium that absorbs its attention; and what we term justice is truly nothing but this equilibrium transformed, as honey is nothing but a transformation of the sweetness found in the flower. Outside man there is no justice; within him injustice cannot be.

~ Maurice Maeterlinck

We are not wrong, perhaps, to be heedful of justice in the midst of a universe that heeds not at all; as the bee is not wrong to make honey in a world that itself can make none. But we are wrong to desire an external justice, since we know that it does not exist. Let that which is in us suffice. All is for ever being weighed and judged in our soul. It is we who shall judge ourselves; or rather, our happiness is our judge.

~ Maurice Maeterlinck

An act of goodness is of itself an act of happiness.

~ Maurice Maeterlinck

I have done what I could do in life and if I could not do better I did not deserve it. In vain I have tried to step beyond what bound me.

~ Maurice Maeterlinck

I have done what I could do in life and if I could not do better I did not deserve it. In vain I have tried to step beyond what bound me.

~ Maurice Maeterlinck

All our knowledge merely helps us to die a more painful death than animals that know nothing.

~ Maurice Maeterlinck

We possess only the happiness we are able to understand.

~ Maurice Maeterlinck

Remember that happiness is as contagious as gloom. It should be the first duty of those who are happy to let others know of their gladness.

~ Maurice Maeterlinck

Many a happiness in life, as many a disaster, can be due to chance, but the peace within us can never be governed by chance.

~ Maurice Maeterlinck

It is not from reason that justice springs, but goodness is born of wisdom.

~ Maurice Maeterlinck

At every crossroads on the path that leads to the future, tradition has placed 10,000 men to guard the past.

~ Maurice Maeterlinck