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

More quotes by 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.
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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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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.
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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 dog is the only living being that has found and recognizes an indubitable, tangible and definite god. He knows to whom above him to give himself. He has not to seek for a superior and infinite power.
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Physical suffering apart, not a single sorrow exists that can touch us except through our thoughts.
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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.
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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 is not from reason that justice springs, but goodness is born of wisdom.
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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.
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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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Our reason may prove what it will: our reason is only a feeble ray that has issued from Nature.
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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 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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I count only the hours that are serene.
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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If you love yourself meanly, childishly, timidly, even so shall you love your neighbor.
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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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How strangely do we diminish a thing as soon as we try to express it in words.
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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.
Maurice Maeterlinck