Quote

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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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
Fear
Among
Progressive
Timid
Spirit
Along
Opposed
Appointed
Nature
Thousand
Add
Sufficiently
Past
Dead
Leads
Towers
Every
Least
Fairs
Guard
Men
Path
Former
Persistence
Days
Fair
Drag
Drags
Future
Weight
Immense
Defended

More quotes by 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.
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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.
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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.
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The value of ourselves is but the value of our melancholy and our disquiet.
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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.
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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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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.
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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.
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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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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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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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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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There is no soul that does not respond to love, for the soul of man is a guest that has gone hungry these centuries back.
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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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It is death that is the guide of our life, and our life has no goal but death.
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I count only the hours that are serene.
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The dog who meets with a good master is the happier of the two.
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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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It is not from reason that justice springs, but goodness is born of wisdom.
Maurice Maeterlinck