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We were rather inclined to believe that courage, physical and moral fortitude, self-denial, stoicism, the renunciation of every sort of comfort, the … - Maurice Maeterlinck
" "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.
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About Maurice Maeterlinck
Count Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck (29 August 1862 – 6 May 1949) was a Belgian poet, playwright, and essayist who wrote in French, most famous for his work L'Oiseau Bleu (The Blue Bird), and for other works exploring the meaning of life and death. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911.
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Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck
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Additional quotes by Maurice Maeterlinck
Are you not pleased to have seen your grandparents? Is that not enough happiness for one day? Are you not glad that you have restored the old blackbird to life? Listen to him singing! As you look for the Blue Bird, dear children, accustom yourselves to love the gray birds which you find on your way.
As you climb up a mountain towards nightfall, the trees and the houses, the steeple, the fields and the orchards, the road, and even the river, will gradually dwindle and fade, and at last disappear in the gloom that steals over the valley. But the threads of light that shine from the houses of men and pierce through the blackest of nights, these shine on undimmed. And every step that you take to the summit reveals but more lights, and more, in the hamlets asleep at your foot. For light, though so fragile, is perhaps the one thing of all that yields naught of itself as it faces immensity. Thus it is with our moral light too, when we look upon life from some slight elevation. It is well that reflection should teach us to disburden our soul of base passions; but it should not discourage, or weaken, our humblest desire for justice, for truth, and for love.
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When we lose one we love, our bitterest tears are called forth by the memory of hours when we loved not enough. If we always had smiled on the one who is gone, there would be no despair in our grief; and some sweetness would cling to our tears, reminiscent of virtues and happiness. For our recollections of veritable love — which indeed is the act of virtue containing all others — call from our eyes the same sweet, tender tears as those most beautiful hours wherein memory was born.
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