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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.

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
Less
Spent
War
Labor
Nation
Worth
Moral
Nations
Determines
Hours
Manner
Freedom
Determine

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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.
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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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It is the evil that lies in ourselves that is ever least tolerant of the evil that dwells within others.
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If the bee disappeared off the face of the earth, man would only have four years left to live.
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It's good to slowly come to the realization that you understand nothing.
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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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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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If you love yourself meanly, childishly, timidly, even so shall you love your neighbor.
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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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I count only the hours that are serene.
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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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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.
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Happiness is rarely absent it is we that know not of its presence.
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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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To be happy is only to have freed one's soul from the unrest of unhappiness.
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It is only in the space that our thoughts and our feelings enclose that our happiness can breathe in freedom.
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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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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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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.
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