Maurice Maeterlinck
Maurice Maeterlinck
Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard MaeterlinckMaeterlinck from 1932; in Belgium, in France; 29 August 1862 – 6 May 1949) was a Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist who was a Fleming, but wrote in French. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911 "in appreciation of his many-sided literary activities, and especially of his dramatic works, which are distinguished by a wealth of imagination and by a poetic fancy, which reveals, sometimes in the guise of a fairy...
NationalityBelgian
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth29 August 1862
CountryBelgium
To be good we must needs have suffered; but perhaps it is necessary to have caused suffering before we can become better.
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.
Most creatures have a vague belief that a very precarious hazard, a kind of transparent membrane, divides death from love; and that the profound idea of nature demands that the giver of life should die at the moment of giving.
Wisdom requires no form; her beauty must vary, as varies the beauty of flame. She is no motionless goddess, for ever couched on her throne.
A truth that disheartens because it is true is of more value than the most stimulating of falsehoods.
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.
We should tell ourselves once and for all that it is the first duty of the soul to become as happy, complete, independent, and great as lies in its power. To this end we may sacrifice even the passion for sacrifice, for sacrifice never should be the means of ennoblement, but only the sign of being ennobled.
What man is there that does not laboriously, though all unconsciously, himself fashion the sorrow that is to be the pivot of his 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.
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.
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.
Happiness will never be any greater than the idea we have of it.
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.
It is only in the space that our thoughts and our feelings enclose that our happiness can breathe in freedom.