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
Necessary
Perhaps
Suffering
Become
Better
Must
Needs
Suffered
Good
Caused

More quotes by 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
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
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
The manner in which the hours of freedom are spent determines, no less than labor and war, the moral worth of a nation.
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
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
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
Happiness is rarely absent it is we that know not of its presence.
Maurice Maeterlinck
Image
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
Image
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
Image
If you love yourself meanly, childishly, timidly, even so shall you love your neighbor.
Maurice Maeterlinck
Image
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
Image
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.
Maurice Maeterlinck
Image
When we lose one we love, our bitterest tears are called forth by the memory of hours when we loved not enough.
Maurice Maeterlinck
Image
It is not from reason that justice springs, but goodness is born of wisdom.
Maurice Maeterlinck
Image
To be happy is only to have freed one's soul from the unrest of unhappiness.
Maurice Maeterlinck
Image
There comes no adventure but wears to our soul the shape of our everyday thoughts.
Maurice Maeterlinck
Image
I count only the hours that are serene.
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
Physical suffering apart, not a single sorrow exists that can touch us except through our thoughts.
Maurice Maeterlinck