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

More quotes by Maurice Maeterlinck

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The dog who meets with a good master is the happier of the two.
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If you love yourself meanly, childishly, timidly, even so shall you love your neighbor.
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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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Physical suffering apart, not a single sorrow exists that can touch us except through our thoughts.
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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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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.
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To be happy is only to have freed one's soul from the unrest of unhappiness.
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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 value of ourselves is but the value of our melancholy and our disquiet.
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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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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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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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To disdain today is to prove that yesterday has been misunderstood.
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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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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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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 the bee disappeared off the face of the earth, man would only have four years left to live.
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.
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It's good to slowly come to the realization that you understand nothing.
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It is death that is the guide of our life, and our life has no goal but death.
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