M Maeterlinck Quotes & Sayings

Most creatures have a vague belief that a very precarious hazard, a kind of transparent membrane, divides death from love; and that the profound idea of nature demands that the giver of life should die at the moment of giving. — 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

The dog is the only living being that has found and recognizes an indubitable, tangible and definite god. He knows to whom above him to give himself. He has not to seek for a superior and infinite power. — Maurice Maeterlinck

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

The true sage is not he who sees, but he who, seeing the furthest, has the deepest love for mankind. — Maurice Maeterlinck

It is far more important that one's life should be perceived than that it should be transformed; for no sooner has it been perceived, than it transforms itself of its own accord. — Maurice Maeterlinck

No great inner event befalls those who summon it not. — 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

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

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

Besides, I myself have now for a long time ceased to look for anything more beautiful in this world, or more interesting, than the truth; or at least than the effort one is able to make towards the truth. — 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

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

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

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

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. To this end we may sacrifice even the passion for sacrifice, for sacrifice never should be the means of ennoblement, but only the sign of being ennobled. — Maurice Maeterlinck

Happiness is rarely absent; it is we that know not of its presence. — 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

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

A truth that disheartens because it is true is of more value than the most stimulating of falsehoods. — Maurice Maeterlinck

Perhaps we do not yet know what the word "to love" means. There are within us lives in which we love unconsciously. To love thus means more than to have pity, to make inner sacrifices, to be anxious to help and give happiness; it is a thing that lies a thousand fathoms deeper, where our softest, swiftest, strongest words cannot reach it. At moments we might believe it to be a recollection, furtive but excessively keen, of great primitive unity. There is in this love a force that nothing can resist. — Maurice Maeterlinck

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

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

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

They believe that nothing will happen because they have closed their doors. — 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

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