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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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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
Great
Ends
Lies
Even
Become
Duty
Never
Power
Passion
Ennoblement
May
Lying
Ennobled
Soul
Happiness
Sign
Firsts
Happy
Complete
First
Means
Independent
Mean
Tell
Sacrifice

More quotes by Maurice Maeterlinck

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To disdain today is to prove that yesterday has been misunderstood.
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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.
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It is not from reason that justice springs, but goodness is born of wisdom.
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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.
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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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The value of ourselves is but the value of our melancholy and our disquiet.
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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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At every crossroads on the path that leads to the future, tradition has placed 10,000 men to guard the past.
Maurice Maeterlinck
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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
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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
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I count only the hours that are serene.
Maurice Maeterlinck
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It is death that is the guide of our life, and our life has no goal but death.
Maurice Maeterlinck
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The dog who meets with a good master is the happier of the two.
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