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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.

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
Tried
Step
Beyond
Steps
Bound
Better
Bounds
Done
Vain
Life
Acceptance
Deserve

More quotes by Maurice Maeterlinck

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When we lose one we love, our bitterest tears are called forth by the memory of hours when we loved not enough.
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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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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.
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It is only in the space that our thoughts and our feelings enclose that our happiness can breathe in freedom.
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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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It's good to slowly come to the realization that you understand nothing.
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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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The true sage is not he who sees, but he who, seeing the furthest, has the deepest love for mankind.
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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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Justice is the very last thing of all wherewith the universe concerns itself. It is equilibrium that absorbs its attention.
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It is the evil that lies in ourselves that is ever least tolerant of the evil that dwells within others.
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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.
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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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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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An act of goodness is of itself an act of happiness.
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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To be happy is only to have freed one's soul from the unrest of unhappiness.
Maurice Maeterlinck
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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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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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I count only the hours that are serene.
Maurice Maeterlinck