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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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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
Would
Shot
Belgium
Shots
Germans
Conditions
Counted
Knew
Dealt
Enemy
Captured
Since
German
Play
Occupation
Always
Germany

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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 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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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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There comes no adventure but wears to our soul the shape of our everyday thoughts.
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I count only the hours that are serene.
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An act of goodness is of itself an act of happiness.
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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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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.
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It's good to slowly come to the realization that you understand nothing.
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Happiness is rarely absent it is we that know not of its presence.
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When we lose one we love, our bitterest tears are called forth by the memory of hours when we loved not enough.
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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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Justice is the very last thing of all wherewith the universe concerns itself. It is equilibrium that absorbs its attention.
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To be happy is only to have freed one's soul from the unrest of unhappiness.
Maurice Maeterlinck