Maurice Maeterlinck Quotes

Justice is the very last thing of all wherewith the universe concerns itself. It is equilibrium that absorbs its attention. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

The hour of justice does not strike On the dials of this world. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

Be good at the depth of you, and you will discover that those who surround you will be good even to the same depths. Nothing responds more infallibly to the secret cry of goodness than the secret cry of goodness that is near. While you are actively good in the invisible, all those who approach you will unconsciously do things that they could not do by the side of any other man. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

This invisible and divine goodness, of which I only speak here because of its being one of the surest and nearest signs of the unceasing activity of our soul, this invisible and divine goodness ennobles, in decisive fashion, all that it has unconsciously touched. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

Can it be that man is nothing but a frightened god? ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

As soon as we put something into words, we devalue it in a strange way. We think we have plunged into the depths of the abyss, and when we return to the surface the drop of water on our pale fingertips no longer resembles the sea from which it comes. We delude ourselves that we have discovered a wonderful treasure trove, and when we return to the light of day we find that we have brought back only false stones and shards of glass; and yet the treasure goes on glimmering in the dark, unaltered. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

Can we conceive what humanity would be if it did not know the flowers? ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

To love thus is to love according to the soul; and there is no soul that does not respond to this love. For the soul of man is a guest that has gone hungry these centuries back, and never has it to be summoned twice to the nuptial feast. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

To love one's neighbour in the immovable depths means to love in others that which is eternal; for one's neighbour, in the truest sense of the term, is that which approaches the nearest to God; in other words, all that is best and purest in man; and it is only by ever lingering near the gates I spoke of, that you can discover the divine in the soul. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

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

At every crossway on the path that leads to the future, each progressive spirit is opposed by a thousand men appointed to guard the past. Let us have no fear that the fair towers of former days be sufficiently defended. The least that the most timid among us can do is not to add to the immense dead weight that nature drags along. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

Thousands of channels there are through which the beauty of your soul may sail even unto our thoughts. Above all is there the wonderful, central channel of love. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

When we lose one we love, our bitterest tears are called forth by the memory of hours when we loved not enough. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

Each man has to seek out his own special aptitude for a higher life in the midst of the humble and inevitable reality of daily existence. Than this there can be no nobler aim in life. It is only by the communications we have with the infinite that we are to be distinguished from each other. ~ 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

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

The souls of all our brethren are ever hovering about us, craving for a caress, and only waiting for the signal. ~ 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

Death and death alone is what we must consult about life; and not some vague future or survival, in which we shall not be present. It is our own end; and everything happens in the interval between death and now. Do not talk to me of those imaginary prolongations which wield over us the childish spell of number; do not talk to me - to me who am to die outright - of societies and peoples! There is no reality, there is no true duration, save that between the cradle and the grave. The rest is mere bombast, show, delusion! They call me a master because of some magic in my speech and thoughts; but I am a frightened child in the presence of death! ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

Above all, let us never forget that an act of goodness is in itself an act of happiness. It is the flower of a long inner life of joy and contentment; it tells of peaceful hours and days on the sunniest heights of our soul. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

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

If you love yourself meanly, childishly, timidly, even so shall you love your neighbor. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

He who knows himself is wise; yet have we no sooner acquired real consciousness of our being than we learn that true wisdom is a thing that lies far deeper than consciousness. The chief gain of increased consciousness is that it unveils an ever-loftier unconsciousness, on whose heights do the sources lie of the purest wisdom. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

When the Devil was a woman,
When Lilith wound
Her ebony hair in heavy braids,
And framed
Her pale features all 'round
With Botticelli's tangled thoughts,
When she, smiling softly,
Ringed all her slim fingers
In golden bands with brilliant stones,
When she leafed through Villiers
And loved Huysmans,
When she fathomed Maeterlinck's silence
And bathed her Soul
In Gabriel d'Annunzio's colors,
She even laughed
And as she laughed,
The little princess of serpents sprang
Out of her mouth.
Then the most beautiful of she-devils
Sought after the serpent,
She seized the Queen of Serpents
With her ringed finger,
So that she wound and hissed
Hissed, hissed
And spit venom.
In a heavy copper vase;
Damp earth,
Black damp earth
She scattered upon it.
Lightly her great hands caressed
This heavy copper vase
All around,
Her pale lips lightly sang
Her ancient curse.
Like a children's rhyme her curses chimed,
Soft and languid
Languid as the kisses,
That the damp earth drank
From her mouth,
But life arose in the vase,
And tempted by her languid kisses,
And tempted by those sweet tones,
From the black earth slowly there crept,
Orchids -
When the most beloved
Adorns her pale features before the mirror
All 'round with Botticelli's a ~ Hanns Heinz Ewers

What man is there that does not laboriously, though all unconsciously, himself fashion the sorrow that is to be the pivot of his life. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

How strangely do we diminish a thing as soon as we try to express it in words. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

Our real life is not the life we live, and we feel that our deepest, nay, our most intimate thoughts are quite apart from ourselves, for we are other than our thoughts and our dreams. And it is only at special moments – it may be by merest accident – that we live our own life. Will the day ever dawn when we shall be what we are? … ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

We possess only the happiness we are able to understand. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

Never for an instant does God cease to speak; but no one thinks of opening the doors. And yet, with a little watchfulness, it were not difficult to hear the word that God must speak concerning our every act. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

No great inner event befalls those who summon it not. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

Every new star that is found in the sky will lend of its rays to the passions, and thoughts, and the courage, of man. Whatever of beauty we see in all that surrounds us, within us already is beautiful; whatever we find in ourselves that is great and adorable, that do we find too in others. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

And on this earth of ours there are but few souls that can withstand the dominion of the soul that has suffered itself to become beautiful. ~ 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

To be happy is only to have freed one's soul from the unrest of unhappiness. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

We all live in the sublime. Where else can we live? That is the only place of life. Though you have but a little room, do you fancy that God is not there, too, and it is impossible to live therein a life that shall be somewhat lofty? Do you imagine that you can possibly be alone, that love can be a thing one knows, a thing one sees; that events can be weighed like the gold and silver of ransom? ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

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

It is the disaster of our entire existence that we live thus away from our soul, and stand in such dread of its slightest movement. Did we but allow it to smile frankly in its silence and its radiance, we should be already living an eternal life. We have only to think for an instant how much it succeeds in accomplishing during those rare moments when we knock off its chains – for it is our custom to enchain it as though it were distraught – what it does in love, for instance, for there we do permit it at times to approach the lattices of external life. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

It feels like I've got all the flames in hell burning in my head. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

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

Must we always be warned, and can we only fall on our knees when some one is there to tell us that God is passing by? If you have loved profoundly you have needed no one to tell you that your soul was a thing as great in itself as the world; that the stars, the flowers, the waves of night and sea were not solitary; that it was on the threshold of appearances that everything began, but nothing ended, and that the very lips you kissed belonged to a creature who was loftier, much purer, and much more beautiful than the one whom your arms enfolded. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

We subdue that in others which we have learned to subdue in ourselves. Around the upright man there is drawn a wide circle of peace, within which the arrows of evil soon cease to fall; nor have his fellows the power to inflict moral suffering upon him. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

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

We are wrong in believing that it comes from without. For indeed we create it within us, out of our very substance. ~ 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

Are we to believe that earth marks the most advanced stage and the most favoured experiment? What, then, can the thought of the universe have done and against what darkness must it have struggled, to have come no farther than this? ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

… it is that such of us as have loved deeply have learnt many secrets that are unknown to others; for thousands and thousands of things quiver in silence on the lips of true friendship and love, that are not to be found in the silence of other lips, to which friendship and love are unknown. … ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

All mothers are rich when they love their children. There are no poor mothers, no ugly ones, no old ones. Their love is always the most beautiful of joys. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

Unless we close our eyes we are always deceived. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

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

It is death that is the guide of our life, and our life has no goal but death. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

It is well to believe that there needs but a little more thought, a little more courage, more love, more devotion to life, a little more eagerness, one day to fling open wide the portals of joy and of truth. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

Once at a potent leader's voice I stayed; Once I went back when a good monarch prayed; Mortals, howe'er we grieve, howe'er deplore, The flying shadow will return no more. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

Each progressive spirit is opposed by a thousand mediocre minds appointed to guard the past. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

We can be born thus more than once; and each birth brings us a little nearer to our God. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

Every year, in November, at the season that follows the hour of the dead, the crowning and majestic hours of autumn, I go to visit the chrysanthemums ... They are indeed, the most universal, the most diverse of flowers. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

Wisdom requires no form; her beauty must vary, as varies the beauty of flame. She is no motionless goddess, for ever couched on her throne. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

An obstacle is not a discouragement. It may become one, but only with our own consent. So long as we refuse to be discouraged, we cannot be discouraged. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

The value of ourselves is but the value of our melancholy and our disquiet. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

There is no soul that does not respond to love, for the soul of man is a guest that has gone hungry these centuries back. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

It's good to slowly come to the realization that you understand nothing. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

If I tell some one that I love him – as I may have told a hundred others – my words will convey nothing to him; but the silence which will ensue, if I do indeed love him, will make clear in what depths lie the roots of my love, and will in its turn give birth to a conviction, that shall itself be silent; and in the course of a lifetime, this silence and this conviction will never again be the same. … ~ 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

No living creature, not even man, has achieved, in the centre of his sphere, what the bee has achieved in her own: and were some one from another world to descend and ask of the earth the most perfect creation of the logic of life, we should needs have to offer the humble comb of honey. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

Bees will not work except in darkness;
Thought will not work except in Silence;
neither will Virtue Work except in secrecy. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

Nothing in the whole world is so athirst for beauty as the soul, nor is there anything to which beauty clings so readily. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

He who sees without loving is only straining his eyes in the darkness. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

Brave old-flowers! Wall-flowers, Gilly flowers, Stocks! For even as the field-flowers, from which a trifle, a ray of beauty, a drop of perfume, divides them, they have charming names, the softest in the language; and each of them, like tiny, art-less ex-votos, or like medals bestowed by the gratitude of men, proudly bears three or four. ~ 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

We possess only the happiness we able to understand. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

Sometimes the male flowers rise to the surface when there are not yet any pistillated flowers in the vicinity. And at other times, when low water permits them easily to reach their companions, they still break their stems no less automatically and uselessly. I maintain here, once again, that the whole genius rests in the species, in life or nature, and that the individual on the whole is stupid. Only in mankind do we find true emulation of the two intelligences, an increasingly precise and active tendency toward a kind of balance that is the great secret of our future. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

The living are just the dead on holiday ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

It is a thing that knows no limit, and before it all men are equal; and the silence of king or slave, in presence of death, or grief, or love, reveals the same features, hides beneath its impenetrable mantle the self-same treasure. For this is the essential silence of our soul, our most inviolable sanctuary, and its secret can never be lost; ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

For what are in reality the things we call 'Wisdom,' 'Virtue,' 'Heroism,' 'sublime hours,' and 'great moments of life,' but the moments when we have more or less issued forth from ourselves, and have been able to halt, be it only for an instant, on the step of one of the eternal gates whence we see that the faintest cry, the most colourless thought, and most nerveless gestures do not drop into nothingness; … ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

At every crossroad on the way that leads to the future, each progressive spirit is opposed by a thousand men appointed to guard the past. ~ 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

Before we can bring happiness to others, we first must be happy ourselves; nor will happiness abide within us unless we confer it on others. If there be a smile upon our lips, those around us will soon smile too; and our happiness will become the truer and deeper as we see that these others are happy. "It is not seemly that I, who, willingly, have brought sorrow to none, should permit myself to be sad," said Marcus Aurelius, in one of his noblest passages. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

I count only the hours that are serene. ~ 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

It is the evil that lies in ourselves that is ever least tolerant of the evil that dwells within others. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

In the world which we know, among the different and primitive geniuses that preside over the evolution of the several species, there exists not one, excepting that of the dog, that ever gave a thought to the presence of man. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

There may be human joy in doing good with definite purpose, but they who do good expecting nothing in return know a joy that is divine. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

In all truth might it be said that beauty is the unique aliment of our soul, for in all places does it search for beauty, and it perishes not of hunger even in the most degraded of lives. For indeed nothing of beauty can pass by and be altogether unperceived. Perhaps does it never pass by save only in our unconsciousness, but its action is no less puissant in gloom of night than by light of day; the joy it procures may be less tangible, but other difference there is none. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

Our lives must be spent seeking our God, for God hides; but His artifices, once they be known, seem so simple and smiling! From that moment, the merest nothing reveals His presence, and the greatness of our life depends on so little. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

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

Men's weaknesses are often necessary to the purposes of life. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

To be good we must needs have suffered; but perhaps it is necessary to have caused suffering before we can become better. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

I have never for one instant seen clearly within myself. How then would you have me judge the deeds of others? ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

We are never the same with others as when we are alone. We are different, even when we are in the dark with them. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

They believe that nothing will happen because they have closed their doors. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

Developed and benefited from the unsustainable patterns of production and consumption which have produced our present dilemma. It is clear that current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class-involving high meat intake, consumption of large amounts of frozen and convenience foods, use of fossil fuels, appliances, home and work-place air-conditioning, and suburban housing-are not sustainable. A shift is necessary toward lifestyles less geared to environmentally damaging consumption patterns. ~ Maurice Strong

A court is an assembly of noble and distinguished beggars. ~ Charles Maurice De Talleyrand

Well, I'm still looking for Maurice Ashley. My essential qualities. I think that more than anything, I try to do the right thing, I think about doing the right thing. ~ Maurice Ashley

Nothing is more difficult than to know precisely what we see. ~ Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Language signifies when instead of copying thought it lets itself be taken apart and put together again by thought. Language bears the sense of thought as a footprint signifies the movement and effort of a body. The empirical use of already established language should be distinguished from its creative use. Empirical language can only be the result of creative language. Speech in the sense of empirical language - that is, the opportune recollection of a preestablished sign – is not speech in respect to an authentic language. It is, as Mallarmé said, the worn coin placed silently in my hand. True speech, on the contrary - speech which signifies, which finally renders "l'absente de tous bouquets" present and frees the sense captive in the thing - is only silence in respect to empirical usage, for it does not go so far as to become a common noun. Language is oblique and autonomous, and if it sometimes signifies a thought or a thing directly, that is only a secondary power derived from its inner life. Like the weaver, the writer works on the wrong side of his material. He has only to do with the language, and it is thus that he suddenly finds himself surrounded by sense. ~ Maurice Merleau-Ponty

I have a God-given talent and I work very hard for what I do. Anybody can run fast. It's how you run fast. I pay attention to technical things now. ~ Maurice Greene

The combination of population growth and the growth in consumption is a danger that we are not prepared for and something we will need global co-operation on. ~ Maurice Strong

Whoever one is, and wherever one is, one is always in the wrong if one is rude. ~ Maurice Baring

Nowadays, if a studio assumes that his film is bad, there is always an executive that gets more nervous than usual and thinks that if they change the music, the film will become a masterpiece. ~ Maurice Jarre

But where are these reference events and these landmarks themselves? They refer us to others, and the answer satisfies us only because we do not attend to it, because we think we are 'at home.' The question would arise again and indeed would be inexhaustible, almost insane, if we wished to situate our levels, measure our standards in their turn, if we were to ask: but where is the world itself? And why am I myself? Am I really alone to be me? Have I not somewhere a double, a twin? ~ Maurice Merleau-Ponty

I heard my brother's voice even though we were apart. I then answered the phone and found him on the line. ~ Maurice Gibb

Each one of us knows for his own part that the world as it is, is unacceptable. ~ Maurice Merleau Ponty