Maurice Maeterlinck Quotes

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

Justice is the very last thing of all wherewith the universe concerns itself. It is equilibrium that...

For it is our most secret desire that governs and dominates all. If your eyes look for nothing but e...

Of what avail are my loftiest thoughts if I have ceased to exist?” there are some will ask; to whom ...

There may be human joy in doing good with definite purpose, but they who do good expecting nothing i...

He who knows himself is wise; yet have we no sooner acquired real consciousness of our being than we...

Every new star that is found in the sky will lend of its rays to the passions, and thoughts, and the...

Should we not invariably act in this life as though the God whom our heart desires with its highest ...

We suffer but little from suffering itself; but from the manner wherein we accept it overwhelming so...

It is well to believe that there needs but a little more thought, a little more courage, more love, ...

Truly they who know still know nothing if the strength of love be not theirs; for the true sage is n...

We should tell ourselves, once and for all, that it is the first duty of the soul to become as happy...

Before we can bring happiness to others, we first must be happy ourselves; nor will happiness abide ...

He is wise who at last sees in suffering only the light that it sheds on his soul; and whose eyes ne...

The angels that dry our eyes bear the form and the features of all we have said and thought—above al...

And indeed, if we had only the courage to listen to the simplest, the nearest, most pressing voice o...

When we lose one we love, our bitterest tears are called forth by the memory of hours when we loved ...

Wisdom is the lamp of love, and love is the oil of the lamp. Love, sinking deeper, grows wiser; and ...

To love thus is to love according to the soul; and there is no soul that does not respond to this lo...

There needs but so little to encourage beauty in our soul; so little to awaken the slumbering angels...

A superior atmosphere exists, in which we all know each other; and there is a mysterious truth – dee...

Each man has to seek out his own special aptitude for a higher life in the midst of the humble and i...

May it not be the supreme aim of life thus to bring to birth the inexplicable within ourselves; and ...

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

Thousands of channels there are through which the beauty of your soul may sail even unto our thought...

This invisible and divine goodness, of which I only speak here because of its being one of the sures...

A thought that is almost beautiful – a thought that you speak not, but that you cherish within you a...

Be good at the depth of you, and you will discover that those who surround you will be good even to ...

… it is that such of us as have loved deeply have learnt many secrets that are unknown to others; fo...

It is the disaster of our entire existence that we live thus away from our soul, and stand in such d...

Our lives must be spent seeking our God, for God hides; but His artifices, once they be known, seem ...

Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together ... Speech is too often ......

To love one’s neighbour in the immovable depths means to love in others that which is eternal; for o...

Must we always be warned, and can we only fall on our knees when some one is there to tell us that G...

In all truth might it be said that beauty is the unique aliment of our soul, for in all places does ...

Death has come and atoned for all. I have no grievance against the soul of the man before me. Instin...

Have we,” asks Claude de Saint-Martin, the great ‘unknown philosopher,’ “have we advanced one step f...

Nothing in the whole world is so athirst for beauty as the soul, nor is there anything to which beau...

We believe we have dived down to the most unfathomable depths, and when we reappear on the surface, ...

We all live in the sublime. Where else can we live? That is the only place of life.

If I tell some one that I love him – as I may have told a hundred others – my words will convey noth...

We all live in the sublime. Where else can we live? That is the only place of life.… All that happen...

As gold and silver are weighed in pure water, so does the soul test its weight in silence, and the w...

For what are in reality the things we call ‘Wisdom,’ ‘Virtue,’ ‘Heroism,’ ‘sublime hours,’ and ‘grea...

Our real life is not the life we live, and we feel that our deepest, nay, our most intimate thoughts...

It is only too evident that the invisible agitations of the kingdoms within us are arbitrarily set o...

It is a thing that knows no limit, and before it all men are equal; and the silence of king or slave...

And it is because we all of us know of this sombre power and its perilous manifestations, that we st...

If the bee disappeared off the face of the earth, man would only have four years left to live.

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

Unless we close our eyes we are always deceived.

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

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

(there is) no other means of escaping from one's consciousness than to deny it, to look upon it as a...

When we lose one we love our bitterest tears are called forth by the memory of hours when we loved ...

Look upon men and things with the inner eye, with its form and desire, never forgetting that the sha...

When we lose one we love, our bitterest tears are called forth by the memory of hours when we loved ...

Many a happiness in life, as many a disaster, can be due to chance, but the peace within us can neve...

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

There is a courage of happiness as well as a courage of sorrow.

We possess only the happiness we are able to understand.

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

There comes no adventure but wears to our soul the shape of our everyday thoughts.

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

Nothing befalls us that is not of the nature of ourselves. There comes no adventure but wears to our...

I have done what I could do in life and if I could not do better I did not deserve it. In vain I h...

Happiness will never be any greater than the idea we have of it.

Do we not all spend the greater part of our lives under the shadow of an event that has not yet come...

We are not wrong, perhaps, to be heedful of justice in the midst of a universe that heeds not at all...

What man is there that does not laboriously though all unconsciously himself fashion the sorrow th...

Remember that happiness is as contagious as gloom. It should be the first duty of those who are happ...

The future is a world limited by ourselves-in it we discover only what concerns us.

To disdain today is to prove that yesterday has been misunderstood.

However imperfect our conception of virtue, still let us cling to it; for a moment’s forgetfulness e...

You do well to have visions of a better life than of every day but it is the life of every day from...

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