154 Quotes by Maurice Maeterlinck

We possess only the happiness we able to understand.

The living are just the dead on holiday

It is the evil that lies in ourselves that is ever least tolerant of the evil that dwells within others.

All our knowledge merely helps us to die a more painful death than the animals that know nothing. A day will come when science will turn upon its error and no longer hesitate to shorten our woes. A day will come when it will dare and act with certainty; when life, grown wiser, will depart silently at its hour, knowing that it has reached its term.

All mothers are rich when they love their children. There are no poor mothers, no ugly ones, no old ones. Their love is always the most beautiful of joys.

To have known how to change the past into a few saddened smiles-is this not to master the future?

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.

Brave old-flowers! Wall-flowers, Gilly flowers, Stocks! For even as the field-flowers, from which a trifle, a ray of beauty, a drop of perfume, divides them, they have charming names, the softest in the language; and each of them, like tiny, art-less ex-votos, or like medals bestowed by the gratitude of men, proudly bears three or four.

If you love yourself meanly, childishly, timidly, even so shall you love your neighbor.