Quotes from Maurice Maeterlinck

We are never the same with others as when we are alone. We are different, even when we are in the dark with them.

Remember that happiness is as contagious as gloom. It should be the first duty of those who are happy to let others know of their gladness.

Many a happiness in life, as many a disaster, can be due to chance, but the peace within us can never be governed by chance.

All our knowledge merely helps us to die a more painful death than animals that know nothing.

We possess only the happiness we are able to understand.

Happiness is rarely absent it is we that know not of its presence.

It is not from reason that justice springs, but goodness is born of wisdom.

In the world which we know, among the different and primitive geniuses that preside over the evolution of the several species, there exists not one, excepting that of the dog, that ever gave a thought to the presence of man.

It is always a mistake not to close one's eyes, whether to forgive or to look better into oneself.

Every progressive spirit is opposed by a thousand mediocre minds appointed to guard the past.

If the bee disappeared off the face of the earth, man would only have four years left to live.

When we lose one we love, our bitterest tears are called forth by the memory of hours when we loved not enough.

All our knowledge merely helps us to die a more painful death than the animals that know nothing.

As soon as we put something into words, we devalue it in a strange way. We think we have plunged into the depths of the abyss, and when we return to the surface the drop of water on our pale fingertips no longer resembles the sea from which it comes. We delude ourselves that we have discovered a wonderful treasure trove, and when we return to the light of day we find that we have brought back only false stones and shards of glass; and yet the treasure goes on glimmering in the dark, unaltered.

We all live in the sublime. Where else can we live? That is the only place of life.

To learn to love, one must first learn to see.

Each progressive spirit is opposed by a thousand mediocre minds appointed to guard the past.

Besides, I myself have now for a long time ceased to look for anything more beautiful in this world, or more interesting, than the truth; or at least than the effort one is able to make towards the truth.

Bees will not work except in darkness; Thought will not work except in Silence; neither will Virtue Work except in secrecy.

At every crossroads on the path that leads to the future tradition has placed 10 000 men to guard the past

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 ...

For it is our most secret desire that governs and dominates all. If your eyes look for nothing but evil, you will always see evil triumphant; but if you have learned to let your glance rest on sincerity, simpleness, truth, you will ever discover, deep down in all things, the silent overpowering victory of that which you love.

Thousands of channels there are through which the beauty of your soul may sail even unto our thoughts. Above all is there the wonderful, central channel of love.

A thought that is almost beautiful – a thought that you speak not, but that you cherish within you at this moment, will irradiate you as though you were a transparent vase.