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Maurice Maeterlinck QUOTES

Maurice Maeterlinck QUOTES

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

― Maurice Maeterlinck

2 " 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. "

― Maurice Maeterlinck , Wisdom And Destiny

3 " Our lives must be spent seeking our God, for God hides; but His artifices, once they be known, seem so simple and smiling! From that moment, the merest nothing reveals His presence, and the greatness of our life depends on so little. "

― Maurice Maeterlinck , The Treasure of the Humble

4 " Should we not invariably act in this life as though the God whom our heart desires with its highest desire were watching our every action? "

― Maurice Maeterlinck , Wisdom And Destiny

5 " For what are in reality the things we call ‘Wisdom,’ ‘Virtue,’ ‘Heroism,’ ‘sublime hours,’ and ‘great moments of life,’ but the moments when we have more or less issued forth from ourselves, and have been able to halt, be it only for an instant, on the step of one of the eternal gates whence we see that the faintest cry, the most colourless thought, and most nerveless gestures do not drop into nothingness; … "

― Maurice Maeterlinck , The Treasure of the Humble

6 " 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. "

― Maurice Maeterlinck , Wisdom And Destiny

7 " He is wise who at last sees in suffering only the light that it sheds on his soul; and whose eyes never rest on the shadow it casts upon those who have sent it towards him. And wiser still is the man to whom sorrow and joy not only bring increase of consciousness, but also the knowledge that something exists superior to consciousness even. To have reached this point is to reach the summit of inward life, whence at last we look down on the flames whose light has helped our ascent. "

― Maurice Maeterlinck , Wisdom And Destiny

8 " We suffer but little from suffering itself; but from the manner wherein we accept it overwhelming sorrow may spring.

We are wrong in believing that it comes from without. For indeed we create it within us, out of our very substance. "

― Maurice Maeterlinck , Wisdom And Destiny

9 " He who knows himself is wise; yet have we no sooner acquired real consciousness of our being than we learn that true wisdom is a thing that lies far deeper than consciousness. The chief gain of increased consciousness is that it unveils an ever-loftier unconsciousness, on whose heights do the sources lie of the purest wisdom. "

― Maurice Maeterlinck , Wisdom And Destiny

10 " 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. "

― Maurice Maeterlinck , Wisdom And Destiny

11 " 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. "

― Maurice Maeterlinck , Wisdom And Destiny

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

― Maurice Maeterlinck , The Life of the Bee

13 " … it is that such of us as have loved deeply have learnt many secrets that are unknown to others; for thousands and thousands of things quiver in silence on the lips of true friendship and love, that are not to be found in the silence of other lips, to which friendship and love are unknown. … "

― Maurice Maeterlinck , The Treasure of the Humble

14 " Our real life is not the life we live, and we feel that our deepest, nay, our most intimate thoughts are quite apart from ourselves, for we are other than our thoughts and our dreams. And it is only at special moments – it may be by merest accident – that we live our own life. Will the day ever dawn when we shall be what we are? … "

― Maurice Maeterlinck , The Treasure of the Humble

15 " Every new star that is found in the sky will lend of its rays to the passions, and thoughts, and the courage, of man. Whatever of beauty we see in all that surrounds us, within us already is beautiful; whatever we find in ourselves that is great and adorable, that do we find too in others. "

― Maurice Maeterlinck , Wisdom And Destiny

16 " 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. "

― Maurice Maeterlinck , The Treasure of the Humble

17 " There needs but so little to encourage beauty in our soul; so little to awaken the slumbering angels; or perhaps is there no need of awakening --- it is enough that we lull them not to sleep. It requires more effort to fall, perhaps, than to rise. Can we, without putting constraint upon ourselves, confine our thoughts to everyday things at times when the sea stretches before us, and we are face to face with the night? And what soul is there but knows that it is ever confronting the sea, ever in presence of an eternal night? "

― Maurice Maeterlinck , The Treasure of the Humble

18 " Nothing in the whole world is so athirst for beauty as the soul, nor is there anything to which beauty clings so readily. There is nothing in the world capable of such spontaneous up-lifting, of such speedy ennoblement; nothing that offers more scrupulous obedience to the pure and noble command it receives. "

― Maurice Maeterlinck , The Treasure of the Humble

19 " In all truth might it be said that beauty is the unique aliment of our soul, for in all places does it search for beauty, and it perishes not of hunger even in the most degraded of lives. For indeed nothing of beauty can pass by and be altogether unperceived. Perhaps does it never pass by save only in our unconsciousness, but its action is no less puissant in gloom of night than by light of day; the joy it procures may be less tangible, but other difference there is none. "

― Maurice Maeterlinck , The Treasure of the Humble

20 " Must we always be warned, and can we only fall on our knees when some one is there to tell us that God is passing by? If you have loved profoundly you have needed no one to tell you that your soul was a thing as great in itself as the world; that the stars, the flowers, the waves of night and sea were not solitary; that it was on the threshold of appearances that everything began, but nothing ended, and that the very lips you kissed belonged to a creature who was loftier, much purer, and much more beautiful than the one whom your arms enfolded. "

― Maurice Maeterlinck , The Treasure of the Humble