154 Quotes by Maurice Maeterlinck

Are we to believe that earth marks the most advanced stage and the most favoured experiment? What, then, can the thought of the universe have done and against what darkness must it have struggled, to have come no farther than this?

No great inner event befalls those who summon it not.

A single hour snatched from death outweighs a whole existence of tortures.

And it is because we all of us know of this sombre power and its perilous manifestations, that we stand in so deep a dread of silence. We can bear, when need must be, the silence of ourselves, that of isolation: but the silence of many – silence multiplied – and above all the silence of a crowd – these are supernatural burdens, whose inexplicable weight brings dread to the mightiest soul.

It’s good to slowly come to the realization that you understand nothing.

Before we can bring happiness to others, we first must be happy ourselves; nor will happiness abide within us unless we confer it on others. If there be a smile upon our lips, those around us will soon smile too; and our happiness will become the truer and deeper as we see that these others are happy. “It is not seemly that I, who, willingly, have brought sorrow to none, should permit myself to be sad,” said Marcus Aurelius, in one of his noblest passages.

Can it be that man is nothing but a frightened god?

It is not the arrival of death, but the departure of life that is appalling. It is not death, but life that we must act upon. It is not death that attacks life; it is life that wrongfully resists death.

El dolor es inevitable, el sufrimiento es opcional.