Quotes from Maurice Maeterlinck

It feels like I've got all the flames in hell burning in my head.

It is only too evident that the invisible agitations of the kingdoms within us are arbitrarily set on foot by the thoughts we shelter. Our myriad intuitions are the veiled queens who steer our course through life, though we have no words in which to speak of them. How strangely do we diminish a thing as soon as we try to express it in words!

Each man has to seek out his own special aptitude for a higher life in the midst of the humble and inevitable reality of daily existence. Than this there can be no nobler aim in life. It is only by the communications we have with the infinite that we are to be distinguished from each other.

At every crossway on the road that leads to the future, each progressive spirit is opposed by a thousand men appointed to guard the past.

Truly they who know still know nothing if the strength of love be not theirs; for the true sage is not he who sees, but he who, seeing the furthest, has the deepest love for mankind. He who sees without loving is only straining his eyes in the darkness.

Are you not pleased to have seen your grandparents? Is that not enough happiness for one day? Are you not glad that you have restored the old blackbird to life? Listen to him singing! As you look for the Blue Bird, dear children, accustom yourselves to love the gray birds which you find on your way.

Evit?m s? ne gândim la moarte pân? când nu mai avem for?a, n-a? spune, de a gândi, ci chiar de a respira.

It is well to believe that there needs but a little more thought, a little more courage, more love, more devotion to life, a little more eagerness, one day to fling open wide the portals of joy and of truth.

There may be human joy in doing good with definite purpose, but they who do good expecting nothing in return know a joy that is divine.

yet may it not be that these questions are idle, and we who are putting them to you mere childish dreamers, hedged round with error and doubt?

We subdue that in others which we have learned to subdue in ourselves. Around the upright man there is drawn a wide circle of peace, within which the arrows of evil soon cease to fall; nor have his fellows the power to inflict moral suffering upon him.

Our reason may prove what it will: our reason is only a feeble ray that has issued from Nature.

Wisdom is the lamp of love, and love is the oil of the lamp. Love, sinking deeper, grows wiser; and wisdom that springs up aloft comes ever the nearer to love. Love is the food of wisdom; wisdom the food of love; a circle of light within which those who love, clasp the hands of those who are wise.

el menor secreto de un objeto, que vemos en la naturaleza que no es humana, toma quizás una parte más directa en el profundo enigma de nuestros fines y de nuestros orígenes que el secreto de nuestras pasiones más arrebatadoras y con sentido más complaciente estudiadas

signs of a life that we cannot explain are everywhere, vibrating by the side of the life of every day.

Somos de tal naturaleza que nada nos lleva tan lejos y tan alto como los impulsos de nuestros errores

Are we to believe that earth marks the most advanced stage and the most favoured experiment? What, then, can the thought of the universe have done and against what darkness must it have struggled, to have come no farther than this?

We are not wrong, perhaps, to be heedful of justice in the midst of a universe that heeds not at all; as the bee is not wrong to make honey in a world that itself can make none. But we are wrong to desire an external justice, since we know that it does not exist. Let that which is in us suffice. All is for ever being weighed and judged in our soul. It is we who shall judge ourselves; or rather, our happiness is our judge.

Through the whole course of history, two distinct willpowers have been noticed that would seem to be the opposed, elemental manifestations of the spirit of our globe, the one seeking only evil, injustice, tyranny and suffering, while the other strives for liberty, the right, radiance and joy.

A single hour snatched from death outweighs a whole existence of tortures.

It is a thing that knows no limit, and before it all men are equal; and the silence of king or slave, in presence of death, or grief, or love, reveals the same features, hides beneath its impenetrable mantle the self-same treasure. For this is the essential silence of our soul, our most inviolable sanctuary, and its secret can never be lost;

Then he stopped, in amazement. 'Why he's blue!' he cried. 'It's my dove just the same, but he has turned blue - ! Why, it's the Blue Bird we were looking for! We have been miles and miles, and he was here all the time! He was here at home! Oh, how wonderful!

Oh, and I almost forgot to say, Neighbour Berlingot's little girl actually did get well, when her brother brought her the beautiful bird in his cage. Did I hear someone ask whether the bird had changed colours, and really was blue ? Well, if Tyltyl and Mytyl's joy and happiness gave him a magnificent blue plumage, isn't that enough? Without knowing it, these gentle children had discovered Light's great secret, which is that we draw nearer to happiness by trying to give it to others!

And it is because we all of us know of this sombre power and its perilous manifestations, that we stand in so deep a dread of silence. We can bear, when need must be, the silence of ourselves, that of isolation: but the silence of many - silence multiplied - and above all the silence of a crowd - these are supernatural burdens, whose inexplicable weight brings dread to the mightiest soul.