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
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
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
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
All our knowledge merely helps us to die a more painful death than animals that know nothing.
—Maurice Maeterlinck
Topics: Knowledge, Death
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
Happiness will never be any greater than the idea we have of it.
—Maurice Maeterlinck
Topics: Happiness, Optimism, Positive Attitudes
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