154 Quotes by Maurice Maeterlinck

It is only in the space that our thoughts and our feelings enclose that our happiness can breathe in freedom.

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.

Happiness will never be any greater than the idea we have of it.

Is not every action of Hamlet induced by a fanatical impulse, which tells him that duty consists in revenge alone? And dose it need superhuman efforts to recognize that revenge never can be duty? I say again that Hamlet thinks much, but that he is by no means wise.

At every crossway on the path that leads to the future, each progressive spirit is opposed by a thousand men appointed to guard the past. Let us have no fear that the fair towers of former days be sufficiently defended. The least that the most timid among us can do is not to add to the immense dead weight that nature drags along.

And on this earth of ours there are but few souls that can withstand the dominion of the soul that has suffered itself to become beautiful.

Men's weaknesses are often necessary to the purposes of life.

An obstacle is not a discouragement. It may become one, but only with our own consent. So long as we refuse to be discouraged, we cannot be discouraged.

What man is there that does not laboriously, though all unconsciously, himself fashion the sorrow that is to be the pivot of his life.