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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
Freedom
Determine
Less
Spent
War
Labor
Nation
Worth
Moral
Nations
Determines
Hours
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More quotes by Maurice Maeterlinck

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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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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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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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To disdain today is to prove that yesterday has been misunderstood.
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I count only the hours that are serene.
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The value of ourselves is but the value of our melancholy and our disquiet.
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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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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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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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The dog who meets with a good master is the happier of the two.
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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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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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All our knowledge merely helps us to die a more painful death than animals that know nothing.
Maurice Maeterlinck
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The hour of justice does not strike On the dials of this world.
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.
Maurice Maeterlinck
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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.
Maurice Maeterlinck
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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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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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To be happy is only to have freed one's soul from the unrest of unhappiness.
Maurice Maeterlinck
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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.
Maurice Maeterlinck