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

Maurice Maeterlinck

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Maurice Maeterlinck
Age: 86 †
Born: 1862
Born: August 29
Died: 1949
Died: May 5
Author
Essayist
Librettist
Philosopher
Playwright
Poet
Translator
Writer
Gent
Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck
Men
Placed
Leads
Management
Tradition
Path
Future
Past
Crossroads
Every
Guard

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In any event, a truth that disheartens, because it is true, is still of far more value than the most stimulating of falsehoods.
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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.
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All our knowledge merely helps us to die a more painful death than animals that know nothing.
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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.
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How strangely do we diminish a thing as soon as we try to express it in words.
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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.
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Justice is the very last thing of all wherewith the universe concerns itself. It is equilibrium that absorbs its attention.
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Sacrifice may be a flower that virtue will pluck on its road, but it was not to gather this flower that virtue set forth on its travels.
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Physical suffering apart, not a single sorrow exists that can touch us except through our thoughts.
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Our reason may prove what it will: our reason is only a feeble ray that has issued from Nature.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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If the bee disappeared off the face of the earth, man would only have four years left to live.
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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.
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The true sage is not he who sees, but he who, seeing the furthest, has the deepest love for mankind.
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To be good we must needs have suffered but perhaps it is necessary to have caused suffering before we can become better.
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The manner in which the hours of freedom are spent determines, no less than labor and war, the moral worth of a nation.
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To disdain today is to prove that yesterday has been misunderstood.
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I count only the hours that are serene.
Maurice Maeterlinck