Top 100 Maurice Maeterlinck Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “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.”

— Maurice Maeterlinck

52. “He who sees without loving is only straining his eyes in the darkness.”

— Maurice Maeterlinck

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

— Maurice Maeterlinck

54. “In the world which we know, among the different and primitive geniuses that preside over the evolution of the several species, there exists not one, excepting that of the dog, that ever gave a thought to the presence of man.”

— Maurice Maeterlinck

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

— Maurice Maeterlinck

56. “Justice is the very last thing of all wherewith the universe concerns itself. It is equilibrium that absorbs its attention.”

— Maurice Maeterlinck

57. “A truth that disheartens because it is true is of more value than the most stimulating of falsehoods.”

— Maurice Maeterlinck

58. “The true sage is not he who sees, but he who, seeing the furthest, has the deepest love for mankind.”

— Maurice Maeterlinck

59. “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.”

— Maurice Maeterlinck

60. “They believe that nothing will happen because they have closed their doors.”

— Maurice Maeterlinck

61. “The value of ourselves is but the value of our melancholy and our disquiet.”

— Maurice Maeterlinck

62. “It is not from reason that justice springs, but goodness is born of wisdom.”

— Maurice Maeterlinck

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

— Maurice Maeterlinck

64. “Unless we close our eyes we are always deceived.”

— Maurice Maeterlinck

65. “There is no soul that does not respond to love, for the soul of man is a guest that has gone hungry these centuries back.”

— Maurice Maeterlinck

66. “Never for an instant does God cease to speak; but no one thinks of opening the doors. And yet, with a little watchfulness, it were not difficult to hear the word that God must speak concerning our every act.”

— Maurice Maeterlinck

67. “We can be born thus more than once; and each birth brings us a little nearer to our God.”

— Maurice Maeterlinck

68. “It is well to believe that there needs but a little more thought, a little more courage, more love, more devotion to life, a little more eagerness, one day to fling open wide the portals of joy and of truth.”

— Maurice Maeterlinck

69. “Physical suffering apart, not a single sorrow exists that can touch us except through our thoughts.”

— Maurice Maeterlinck

70. “The dog is the only living being that has found and recognizes an indubitable, tangible and definite god. He knows to whom above him to give himself. He has not to seek for a superior and infinite power.”

— Maurice Maeterlinck

71. “To love one’s neighbour in the immovable depths means to love in others that which is eternal; for one’s neighbour, in the truest sense of the term, is that which approaches the nearest to God; in other words, all that is best and purest in man; and it is only by ever lingering near the gates I spoke of, that you can discover the divine in the soul.”

— Maurice Maeterlinck

72. “I knew that if I was captured by the Germans I would be shot at once, since I have always been counted as an enemy of Germany because of my play, Le Bourgmestre de Stillemonde, which dealt with the conditions in Belgium during the German Occupation of 1918.”

— Maurice Maeterlinck

73. “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.”

— Maurice Maeterlinck

74. “For it is our most secret desire that governs and dominates all. If your eyes look for nothing but evil, you will always see evil triumphant; but if you have learned to let your glance rest on sincerity, simpleness, truth, you will ever discover, deep down in all things, the silent overpowering victory of that which you love.”

— Maurice Maeterlinck

75. “It feels like I’ve got all the flames in hell burning in my head.”

— Maurice Maeterlinck

76. “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;.”

— Maurice Maeterlinck

77. “Be good at the depth of you, and you will discover that those who surround you will be good even to the same depths. Nothing responds more infallibly to the secret cry of goodness than the secret cry of goodness that is near. While you are actively good in the invisible, all those who approach you will unconsciously do things that they could not do by the side of any other man.”

— Maurice Maeterlinck

78. “It is only too evident that the invisible agitations of the kingdoms within us are arbitrarily set on foot by the thoughts we shelter. Our myriad intuitions are the veiled queens who steer our course through life, though we have no words in which to speak of them. How strangely do we diminish a thing as soon as we try to express it in words!”

— Maurice Maeterlinck

79. “We subdue that in others which we have learned to subdue in ourselves. Around the upright man there is drawn a wide circle of peace, within which the arrows of evil soon cease to fall; nor have his fellows the power to inflict moral suffering upon him.”

— Maurice Maeterlinck

80. “We are not wrong, perhaps, to be heedful of justice in the midst of a universe that heeds not at all; as the bee is not wrong to make honey in a world that itself can make none. But we are wrong to desire an external justice, since we know that it does not exist. Let that which is in us suffice. All is for ever being weighed and judged in our soul. It is we who shall judge ourselves; or rather, our happiness is our judge.”

— Maurice Maeterlinck

81. “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.”

— Maurice Maeterlinck

82. “Truly they who know still know nothing if the strength of love be not theirs; for the true sage is not he who sees, but he who, seeing the furthest, has the deepest love for mankind. He who sees without loving is only straining his eyes in the darkness.”

— Maurice Maeterlinck

83. “It is sad to love and be unloved, but sadder still to be unable to love.”

— Maurice Maeterlinck

84. “But cannot we live as though we always loved? It was this that the saints and heroes did; this and nothing more.”

— Maurice Maeterlinck

85. “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?”

— Maurice Maeterlinck

86. “Nothing in the whole world is so athirst for beauty as the soul, nor is there anything to which beauty clings so readily. There is nothing in the world capable of such spontaneous up-lifting, of such speedy ennoblement; nothing that offers more scrupulous obedience to the pure and noble command it receives.”

— Maurice Maeterlinck

87. “To learn to love, one must first learn to see.”

— Maurice Maeterlinck

88. “He who knows himself is wise; yet have we no sooner acquired real consciousness of our being than we learn that true wisdom is a thing that lies far deeper than consciousness. The chief gain of increased consciousness is that it unveils an ever-loftier unconsciousness, on whose heights do the sources lie of the purest wisdom.”

— Maurice Maeterlinck

89. “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.”

— Maurice Maeterlinck

90. “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. It is only by the communications we have with the infinite that we are to be distinguished from each other.”

— Maurice Maeterlinck

91. “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. Herein is no egoism, or pride. To become effectually generous and sincerely humble there must be within us a confident, tranquil, and clear comprehension of all that we owe to ourselves.”

— Maurice Maeterlinck

92. “Every new star that is found in the sky will lend of its rays to the passions, and thoughts, and the courage, of man. Whatever of beauty we see in all that surrounds us, within us already is beautiful; whatever we find in ourselves that is great and adorable, that do we find too in others.”

— Maurice Maeterlinck

93. “A thought that is almost beautiful – a thought that you speak not, but that you cherish within you at this moment, will irradiate you as though you were a transparent vase.”

— Maurice Maeterlinck

94. “When once misfortune enters a house, silence is in vain.”

— Maurice Maeterlinck

95. “There may be human joy in doing good with definite purpose, but they who do good expecting nothing in return know a joy that is divine.”

— Maurice Maeterlinck

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

— Maurice Maeterlinck

97. “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.”

— Maurice Maeterlinck

98. “He is wise who at last sees in suffering only the light that it sheds on his soul; and whose eyes never rest on the shadow it casts upon those who have sent it towards him. And wiser still is the man to whom sorrow and joy not only bring increase of consciousness, but also the knowledge that something exists superior to consciousness even. To have reached this point is to reach the summit of inward life, whence at last we look down on the flames whose light has helped our ascent.”

— Maurice Maeterlinck

99. “This invisible and divine goodness, of which I only speak here because of its being one of the surest and nearest signs of the unceasing activity of our soul, this invisible and divine goodness ennobles, in decisive fashion, all that it has unconsciously touched.”

— Maurice Maeterlinck

100. “Thousands of channels there are through which the beauty of your soul may sail even unto our thoughts. Above all is there the wonderful, central channel of love.”

— Maurice Maeterlinck