Quote

To be good we must needs have suffered but perhaps it is necessary to have caused suffering before we can become better.

Maurice Maeterlinck

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Perhaps
Suffering
Become
Better
Must
Needs
Suffered
Good
Caused
Necessary

More quotes by Maurice Maeterlinck

Image
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
Image
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
Image
To disdain today is to prove that yesterday has been misunderstood.
Maurice Maeterlinck
Image
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
Image
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
Image
It is the evil that lies in ourselves that is ever least tolerant of the evil that dwells within others.
Maurice Maeterlinck
Image
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
Image
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.
Maurice Maeterlinck
Image
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
Image
I count only the hours that are serene.
Maurice Maeterlinck
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
If you love yourself meanly, childishly, timidly, even so shall you love your neighbor.
Maurice Maeterlinck
Image
To be happy is only to have freed one's soul from the unrest of unhappiness.
Maurice Maeterlinck
Image
The dog who meets with a good master is the happier of the two.
Maurice Maeterlinck
Image
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
Image
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
Image
If the bee disappeared off the face of the earth, man would only have four years left to live.
Maurice Maeterlinck
Image
Justice is the very last thing of all wherewith the universe concerns itself. It is equilibrium that absorbs its attention.
Maurice Maeterlinck