Maurice Maeterlinck Quotes

"(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")"

Never for an instant does God cease to speak; but no one thinks of opening the doors. And yet, with a little watchfulness, it were not difficult to hear the word that God must speak concerning our every act.

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؟

من بعضي از اشعار شعراي ايراني را در ترجمه هاي فرانسوي خوانده ام و بعضي از ابيات فريدالدين عطار نيشاپوري تاثير زيادي در من كرده است. فريدالدين در يكي از اشعار خود مي گويد
خداوندا اگر چه گناهكار هستم و خود را درخور مجازات مي بينم. ليكن از درگاه تو نااميد نيستم براي اينكه مي دانم كه اگر من در اين جهان بر طبق پيروي از طبيعت خود رفتار كرده ام تو در آن جهان نسبت به من بر طبق طبيعت خود رفتار خواهي نمود.
انصاف بدهيد كه آيا از آغاز زندگي بشر تاكنون در جهان چيزي گفته شده است كه از حيث عمق معني بالاتر از اين گفته عطار نيشاپوري باشد و به اين اندازه اميدبخش باشد؟؟؟

To love one’s neighbour in the immovable depths means to love in others that which is eternal; for one’s neighbour, in the truest sense of the term, is that which approaches the nearest to God; in other words, all that is best and purest in man; and it is only by ever lingering near the gates I spoke of, that you can discover the divine in the soul.

It is the disaster of our entire existence that we live thus away from our soul, and stand in such dread of its slightest movement. Did we but allow it to smile frankly in its silence and its radiance, we should be already living an eternal life. We have only to think for an instant how much it succeeds in accomplishing during those rare moments when we knock off its chains – for it is our custom to enchain it as though it were distraught – what it does in love, for instance, for there we do permit it at times to approach the lattices of external life.

When we lose someone we love, our bitterest tears are called forth by the memory of hours when we loved not enough.

Nothing in the whole world is so athirst for beauty as the soul, nor is there anything to which beauty clings so readily. There is nothing in the world capable of such spontaneous up-lifting, of such speedy ennoblement; nothing that offers more scrupulous obedience to the pure and noble command it receives.

Unless we close our eyes we are always deceived.

We all live in the sublime. Where else can we live? That is the only place of life.
… All that happens to us is divinely great, and we are always in the centre of a great world. But we must accustom ourselves to live like an angel who has just sprung to life, like a woman who loves, or a man on the point of death. If you knew that you were going to die to-night, or merely that you would have to go away and never return, would you, looking upon men and things for the last time, see them in the same light that you have hitherto seen them? Would you not love as you never yet have loved?

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.

El dolor es inevitable, el sufrimiento es opcional.

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

There needs but so little to encourage beauty in our soul; so little to awaken the slumbering angels; or perhaps is there no need of awakening — - it is enough that we lull them not to sleep. It requires more effort to fall, perhaps, than to rise. Can we, without putting constraint upon ourselves, confine our thoughts to everyday things at times when the sea stretches before us, and we are face to face with the night? And what soul is there but knows that it is ever confronting the sea, ever in presence of an eternal night?

… it is that such of us as have loved deeply have learnt many secrets that are unknown to others; for thousands and thousands of things quiver in silence on the lips of true friendship and love, that are not to be found in the silence of other lips, to which friendship and love are unknown. …