Maurice Maeterlinck Quotes

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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