Quote

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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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
World
Athirst
Clings
Readily
Beauty
Anything
Soul
Nothing
Whole

More quotes by 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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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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To be happy is only to have freed one's soul from the unrest of unhappiness.
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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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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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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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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
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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 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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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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To disdain today is to prove that yesterday has been misunderstood.
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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How strangely do we diminish a thing as soon as we try to express it in words.
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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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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An act of goodness is of itself an act of happiness.
Maurice Maeterlinck
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We can never judge a soul above the high water mark of our own.
Maurice Maeterlinck
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Physical suffering apart, not a single sorrow exists that can touch us except through our thoughts.
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
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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