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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.

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
Event
Value
Values
True
Truth
Still
Falsehoods
Stimulating
Falsehood

More quotes by Maurice Maeterlinck

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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.
Maurice Maeterlinck
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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.
Maurice Maeterlinck
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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.
Maurice Maeterlinck
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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
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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
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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.
Maurice Maeterlinck
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Justice is the very last thing of all wherewith the universe concerns itself. It is equilibrium that absorbs its attention.
Maurice Maeterlinck
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The dog who meets with a good master is the happier of the two.
Maurice Maeterlinck
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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
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I knew that if I was captured by the Germans I would be shot at once, since I have always been counted as an enemy of Germany because of my play, 'Le Bourgmestre de Stillemonde,' which dealt with the conditions in Belgium during the German Occupation of 1918.
Maurice Maeterlinck
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There comes no adventure but wears to our soul the shape of our everyday thoughts.
Maurice Maeterlinck
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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.
Maurice Maeterlinck
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If you love yourself meanly, childishly, timidly, even so shall you love your neighbor.
Maurice Maeterlinck
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Happiness is rarely absent it is we that know not of its presence.
Maurice Maeterlinck
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It is not from reason that justice springs, but goodness is born of wisdom.
Maurice Maeterlinck
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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
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It is death that is the guide of our life, and our life has no goal but death.
Maurice Maeterlinck
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The true sage is not he who sees, but he who, seeing the furthest, has the deepest love for mankind.
Maurice Maeterlinck
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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
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It is only in the space that our thoughts and our feelings enclose that our happiness can breathe in freedom.
Maurice Maeterlinck