Count Maurice Maeterlinck (1862–1949,) fully Maurice Polydore-Marie-Bernard Maeterlinck, was a Belgian Symbolist poet, playwright, and essayist. This winner of the 1911 Nobel Prize in Literature is celebrated for his Symbolist theatre’s outstanding works. He wrote in French and looked mainly to French literary movements for inspiration.
Born in Ghent, Maeterlinck studied law there but became a disciple of the Symbolist movement, and in 1889 produced his first volume of poetry, Serres chaudes (‘The Greenhouses.’) His subsequent works were the prose play, La Princesse Maleine (1889; The Princess Maleine, 1890,) and Pelléas and Mélisande (1892; Pelléas and Mélisande, 1894,) on which Claude Debussy based his opera.
Maeterlinck’s other plays include Joyzelle (1903; 1906) and Marie-Magdeleine (1910; Mary Magdalene, 1910.) La Vie des abeilles (1901; The Life of the Bee, 1901) is one of his many popular expositions of scientific subjects, and he wrote several philosophical works.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Maurice Maeterlinck
A truth that disheartens because it is true is of far more value than the most stimulating of falsehoods.
—Maurice Maeterlinck
Topics: Truth
We are never the same with others as when we are alone. We are different, even when we are in the dark with them.
—Maurice Maeterlinck
Topics: Loneliness
The future is a world limited by ourselves—in it we discover only what concerns us.
—Maurice Maeterlinck
Topics: Tomorrow, The Future
Remember that happiness is as contagious as gloom. It should be the first duty of those who are happy to let others know of their gladness.
—Maurice Maeterlinck
Topics: 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.
—Maurice Maeterlinck
Topics: Chance
When we lose one we love, our bitterest tears are called forth by the memory of hours when we loved not enough.
—Maurice Maeterlinck
Topics: Love, Carpe-diem
At every crossroad on the way that leads to the future, each progressive spirit is opposed by a thousand men appointed to guard the past.
—Maurice Maeterlinck
Topics: Future, Change, Progress, Fear
Happiness will never be any greater than the idea we have of it.
—Maurice Maeterlinck
Topics: Optimism, Positive Attitudes, Happiness
To disdain today is to prove that yesterday has been misunderstood.
—Maurice Maeterlinck
Topics: Reflection
Do we not all spend the greater part of our lives under the shadow of an event that has not yet come to pass?
—Maurice Maeterlinck
Topics: Worry
An act of goodness is of itself an act of happiness. No reward coming after the event can compare with the sweet reward that went with it.
—Maurice Maeterlinck
You do well to have visions of a better life than of every day, but it is the life of every day from which the elements of a better life must come.
—Maurice Maeterlinck
Topics: The Present
Our reason may prove what it will: our reason is only a feeble ray that has issued from Nature.
—Maurice Maeterlinck
Topics: Reason
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.
—Maurice Maeterlinck
Topics: Talent
Can we conceive what humanity would be if it did not know the flowers?
—Maurice Maeterlinck
Topics: Flowers
They believe that nothing will happen because they have closed their doors.
—Maurice Maeterlinck
Topics: Apathy, Belief
I have done what I could do in life, and if I could not do better, I did not deserve it. In vain have I tried to step beyond what bound me. Despite my years, I am still trying.
—Maurice Maeterlinck
Topics: Realistic Expectations, Awareness, Expectations, Achievements, Realization, Acceptance
All our knowledge merely helps us to die a more painful death than animals that know nothing.
—Maurice Maeterlinck
Topics: Knowledge, Death
It is not from reason that justice springs, but goodness is born of wisdom.
—Maurice Maeterlinck
Topics: Wisdom
There is a courage of happiness as well as a courage of sorrow.
—Maurice Maeterlinck
Topics: Courage, Happiness
Nothing befalls us that is not of the nature of ourselves. There comes no adventure but wears to our soul the shape of our everyday thoughts.
—Maurice Maeterlinck
Topics: Positive Attitudes, Optimism
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