Death has come and atoned for all. I have no grievance against the soul of the man before me. Instinctively do I recognize that it soars high above the gravest faults and the cruelest wrongs (and how admirable and full of significance is this instinct!). If there linger still a regret within me, it is not that I am unable to inflict suffering in my turn, but it is perhaps that my love was not great enough and that my forgiveness has come too late. …

— Maurice Maeterlinck

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

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. Then 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

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

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

For what are in reality the things we call ‘Wisdom,’ ‘Virtue,’ ‘Heroism,’ ‘sublime hours,’ and ‘great moments of life,’ but the moments when we have more or less issued forth from ourselves, and have been able to halt, be it only for an instant, on the step of one of the eternal gates whence we see that the faintest cry, the most colorless thought, and most nerveless gestures do not drop into nothingness; …

— Maurice Maeterlinck

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

— Maurice Maeterlinck

Have we,” asks Claude de Saint-Martin, the great ‘unknown philosopher,’ “have we advanced one step further on the radiant path of enlightenment, that leads to the simplicity of men?” Let us wait in silence: perhaps ere long we shall be conscious of “the murmur of the gods.

— Maurice Maeterlinck

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

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