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Maurice Maeterlinck

Maurice Maeterlinck Quotes

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Famous Maurice Maeterlinck Quotes

“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.”

MenPastSpiritCan DoPathThousandFairsWeightAddFormerPersistenceProgressiveDragImmenseTowersNo FearHave No Fear
Author:Maurice Maeterlinck
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“(there is) no other means of escaping from one's consciousness than to deny it, to look upon it as an organic disease of the terrestrial intelligence - a disease which we must endeavor to cure by an action which must appear to us an action of violent and willful madness, but which, on the other side of our appearances, is probably an action of health. ("Of Immortality")”

LooksMeanActionSidesConsciousnessDiseaseMadnessAppearanceDenyViolentCuresImmortalityLook UpEndeavorEscaping
Author:Maurice Maeterlinck
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“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.”

PeopleShouldHumansTodayNumbersOpinionProgressAtheismOughtTomorrowExtremesPositive AtheismMediumsDecentOriginalityModerationGood SenseUnreasonableHereticInquisitionSpanish Inquisition
Author:Maurice Maeterlinck
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“All our knowledge merely helps us to die a more painful death than the animals that know nothing. A day will come when science will turn upon its error and no longer hesitate to shorten our woes. A day will come when it will dare and act with certainty; when life, grown wiser, will depart silently at its hour, knowing that it has reached its term.”

KnowsHelpingScienceDeathDiesTurnsTermHoursAnimalKnowledgeKnowingErrorsPainfulDareCertaintyWiserWoePainful Death
Book:Our Eternity
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“Brave old-flowers! Wall-flowers, Gilly flowers, Stocks! For even as the field-flowers, from which a trifle, a ray of beauty, a drop of perfume, divides them, they have charming names, the softest in the language; and each of them, like tiny, art-less ex-votos, or like medals bestowed by the gratitude of men, proudly bears three or four.”

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Book:Old Fashioned Flowers: And Other Out-of-door Studies
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“As soon as we put something into words, we devalue it in a strange way. We think we have plunged into the depths of the abyss, and when we return to the surface the drop of water on our pale fingertips no longer resembles the sea from which it comes. We delude ourselves that we have discovered a wonderful treasure trove, and when we return to the light of day we find that we have brought back only false stones and shards of glass; and yet the treasure goes on glimmering in the dark, unaltered.”

ThinkingWayLightWaterDarkWonderfulSeaStrangeGoes OnReturnStonesDepthGlassesSurfaceTreasurePaleAbyssFingertipsDrop Of WaterDevalueShards Of Glass
Author:Maurice Maeterlinck
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“Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together ... Speech is too often ... the act of quite stifling and suspending thought, so that there is none to conceal ... Speech is of Time, silence is of Eternity ... It is idle to think that, by means of words, any real communication can ever pass from one man to another.”

ThinkingMenMeanRealTogetherSilenceFashionCommunicationSpeechElementsEternityGreat ThingsOne ManIdleSilence IsStifling
Author:Maurice Maeterlinck
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