154 Quotes by Maurice Maeterlinck

The manner in which the hours of freedom are spent determines, no less than labor and war, the moral worth of a nation.

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.

The decent moderation of today will be the least of human things tomorrow. At the time of the Spanish Inquisition, the opinion of good sense and of the good medium was certainly that people ought not to burn too large a number of heretics; extreme and unreasonable opinion obviously demanded that they should burn none at all.

The living are just the dead on holiday.

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.

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

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;.

It is far more important that one’s life should be perceived than that it should be transformed; for no sooner has it been perceived, than it transforms itself of its own accord.

To be happy is only to have freed one’s soul from the unrest of unhappiness.