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
They believe that nothing will happen because they have closed their doors.
Above all, let us never forget that an act of goodness is in itself an act of happiness. It is the flower of a long inner life of joy and contentment; it tells of peaceful hours and days on the sunniest heights of our soul.
The truth that seems discouraging does in reality only transform the courage of those strong enough to accept it; and, in any event, a truth that disheartens, because it is true, is still of far more value than the most stimulating of falsehoods.
An act of goodness is of itself an act of happiness.
Many a happiness in life, as many a disaster, can be due to chance, but the peace within us can never be governed by chance.
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.
Can we conceive what humanity would be if it did not know the flowers?
When we lose one we love, our bitterest tears are called forth by the memory of hours when we loved not enough.
It is not from reason that justice springs, but goodness is born of wisdom.
All our knowledge merely helps us to die a more painful death than animals that know nothing.
I have done what I could do in life, and if I could not do better, I did not deserve it. In vain I have tried to step beyond what bound me.
It is death that is the guide of our life, and our life has no goal but death.
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.
I count only the hours that are serene.