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

More quotes by 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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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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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.
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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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To disdain today is to prove that yesterday has been misunderstood.
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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Every year, in November, at the season that follows the hour of the dead, the crowning and majestic hours of autumn, I go to visit the chrysanthemums ... They are indeed, the most universal, the most diverse of flowers.
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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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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Nothing in the whole world is so athirst for beauty as the soul, nor is there anything to which beauty clings so readily.
Maurice Maeterlinck
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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.
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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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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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.
Maurice Maeterlinck
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At every crossroad on the way that leads to the future, each progressive spirit is opposed by a thousand men appointed to guard the past.
Maurice Maeterlinck
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Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together ... Speech is too often ... the act of quite stifling and suspending thought, so that there is none to conceal ... Speech is of Time, silence is of Eternity ... It is idle to think that, by means of words, any real communication can ever pass from one man to another.
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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I count only the hours that are serene.
Maurice Maeterlinck
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If the bee disappeared off the face of the earth, man would only have four years left to live.
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