Maurice Maeterlinck Quotes
It is only in the space that our thoughts and our feelings enclose that our happiness can breathe in freedom.
Physical suffering apart, not a single sorrow exists that can touch us except through our thoughts.
The souls of all our brethren are ever hovering about us, craving for a caress, and only waiting for the signal.
The manner in which the hours of freedom are spent determines, no less than labor and war, the moral worth of a nation.
Once at a potent leader's voice I stayed; Once I went back when a good monarch prayed; Mortals, howe'er we grieve, howe'er deplore, The flying shadow will return no more.
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.
What man is there that does not laboriously though all unconsciously himself fashion the sorrow that is to be the pivot of his life.
You do well to have visions of a better life than of every day but it is the life of every day from which the elements of a better life must come.
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.
At every crossroads on the path that leads to the future, tradition has placed 10, 000 men to guard the past.
The future is a world limited by ourselves-in it we discover only what concerns us.
Nothing befalls us that is not of the nature of ourselves. There comes no adventure but wears to our soul the shape of our everyday thoughts.
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?
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.
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.
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.
As gold and silver are weighed in pure water, so does the soul test its weight in silence, and the words that we let fall have no meaning apart from the silence that wraps them round.
We all live in the sublime. Where else can we live? That is the only place of life.
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.
The angels that dry our eyes bear the form and the features of all we have said and thought—above all, of what we have done, prior to the hour of misfortune.
It is sad to love and be unloved, but sadder still to be unable to love.
When we lose one we love our bitterest tears are called forth by the memory of hours when we loved not enough.