Maurice Maeterlinck Quotes - Page 2

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.

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.

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.

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.

You do well to have visions of a better life than of every day, but it is the life of every day from which the elements of a better life must come.

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

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.

The truth that seems discouraging does in reality only transform the courage of those strong enough to accept it; and, in any event, a truth that disheartens, because it is true, is still of far more value than the most stimulating of falsehoods.

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.

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

We can never judge a soul above the high water mark of our own.

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

The decent moderation of today will be the least of human things tomorrow. At the time of the Spanish Inquisition, the opinion of good sense and of the good medium was certainly that people ought not to burn too large a number of heretics; extreme and unreasonable opinion obviously demanded that they should burn none at all.

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

I count only the hours that are serene.

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

To have known how to change the past into a few saddened smiles-is this not to master the future?

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

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

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

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

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

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

The dog who meets with a good master is the happier of the two.

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.