Maurice Maeterlinck Quotes

But how much care and study are needed to succeed in fulfilling this duty! And how complicated it has become since the days of the silent caverns and the great deserted lakes! It was all so simple, then, so easy and so clear. The lonely hollow opened upon the side of the hill, and all that approached, all that moved on the horizon of the plains or woods, was the unmistakable enemy.... But to-day you can no longer tell.... You have to acquaint yourself with a civilization of which you disapprove, to appear to understand a thousand incomprehensible things.... Thus, it seems evident that henceforth the whole world no longer belongs to the master, that his property conforms to unintelligible limits....

When once misfortune enters a house, silence is in vain.

به نظر من اگر مرگ در دنیا نبود، بشر به آن محتاج بود و می بایست آن را خلق كند تا از چنگال كسالتهای زندگی رهایی یابد. در حقیقت بسیاری از ما پیش از مردن، مرده هستیم؛ برای اینكه همه چیز خود را از دست داده ایم

We were rather inclined to believe that courage, physical and moral fortitude, self-denial, stoicism, the renunciation of every sort of comfort, the faculty of self-sacrifice and the power of facing death belonged only to the more primitive, the less happy, the less intelligent nations, to the nations least capable of reasoning, of appreciating danger and of picturing in their imagination the dreadful abyss that separates this life from the life unknown. We were even almost persuaded that war would one day cease for lack of soldiers, that is to say, of men foolish enough or unhappy enough to risk the only absolute realities — health, physical comfort, an unimpaired body and, above all, life, the greatest of earthly possessions — for the sake of an ideal which, like all ideals, is more or less invisible.

Truly they who know still know nothing if the strength of love be not theirs; for the true sage is not he who sees, but he who, seeing the furthest, has the deepest love for mankind. He who sees without loving is only straining his eyes in the darkness.

"اگر "نيستي"وجود داشته باشد بايد "هست" شود
و در اينصورت ديگر "نيستي" نخواهد بود و "نيستي" همان "هستي" خواهد بود"

"Before we can bring happiness to others, we first must be happy ourselves; nor will happiness abide within us unless we confer it on others. If there be a smile upon our lips, those around us will soon smile too; and our happiness will become the truer and deeper as we see that these others are happy. "It is not seemly that I, who, willingly, have brought sorrow to none, should permit myself to be sad," said Marcus Aurelius, in one of his noblest passages."

There are other herbs endowed with spontaneous movements that are not so well known, notably the Hedysareæ, among which the Hedysa­rum gyrans, or Moving-plant, acts in a very restless and surprising fashion. This little Leguminosa, which is a native of Bengal, but often cultivated in our hothouses, performs a sort of perpetual and intricate dance in hon­our of the light. Its leaves are divided into three foli­oles, one wide and terminal, the two others narrow and planted at the base of the first. Each of these leaflets is animated with a different movement of its own. They live in a state of rhythmical, almost chronometrical and continuous agitation. They are so sensitive

اينك كه بيش از هشتاد سال از زندگی من می گذرد به گفته فرزانه نامی ايرانی ابن سينا تازه دريافته ام كه چيزی نمی دانم. آيا حيف نيست كه فرزندان آدم در هنگامی كه تازه به نادانی خود پی برده اند بميرند؟

Those about her pitied the poor woman; and, as she did not weep, as she was gay and smiling, they believed her mad.

Never mind... Don't cry... I will catch him again... [Stepping to the front of the stage and addressing the audience.] If any of you should find him, would you be so very kind as to give him back to us?... We need him for our happiness, later on...

"(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")"

Isolate her, and however abundant the food or favourable the temperature, she will expire in a few days not of hunger or cold, but of loneliness.

The future is a world limited by ourselves; in it we discover only what concerns us and, sometimes, by chance, what interests those whom we love the most.

انها لا تشبه اى واحدة من النساء انه جمال من نوع اخر
جمال اكثر غرابة
واكثر سموا
جمال ذو نواح متعددة
جمال يدعو الروح دائما ان تنعكس
على الوجه
اما شعرها فيصح ان يكون المفرد فى ذاته
شعر كانه يساهم فى افكارها فيضحك حين تكون سعيدة ويبكى حين تكون حزينة
على حين انها هى شخصيا
قد تجهل ما اذا كانت ينبغى لها ان تكون سعيدة او حزينة وانا لم ارى قط شعر تنبعث منه الحياه كهذا الشعر انه يخدعها فى جميع الاحيان اذا صح ان نسمى هذه الفضيلة المراد اخفاؤها خداعا لانه ليس لديها ما تحاول ان تخفيه الا الفضيلة