Maurice Maeterlinck

Nothing befalls us that is not of the nature of ourselves. There comes no adventure but wears to our soul the shape of our everyday thoughts.

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.

An act of goodness is of itself an act of happiness.

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

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

There is a courage of happiness as well as a courage of sorrow.

Justice is the very last thing of all wherewith the universe concerns itself. It is equilibrium that absorbs its attention; and what we term justice is truly nothing but this equilibrium transformed, as honey is nothing but a transformation of the sweetness found in the flower. Outside man there is no justice; within him injustice cannot be.

We are not wrong, perhaps, to be heedful of justice in the midst of a universe that heeds not at all; as the bee is not wrong to make honey in a world that itself can make none. But we are wrong to desire an external justice, since we know that it does not exist. Let that which is in us suffice. All is for ever being weighed and judged in our soul. It is we who shall judge ourselves; or rather, our happiness is our judge.

Unless we close our eyes we are always deceived.

To learn to love, one must first learn to see.

The angels that dry our eyes bear the form and the features of all we have said and thought__bove all, of what we have done, prior to the hour of misfortune.

I believe that poems die the moment they are outwardly expressed.

Of what avail are my loftiest thoughts if I have ceased to exist?_ there are some will ask; to whom others, it may be, will answer, __hat becomes of myself if all that I love in my heart and my spirit must die, that my life may be saved?_ And are not almost all the morals, and heroism, and virtue of man summed up in that single choice?

Our reason may prove what it will: our reason is only a feeble ray that has issued from Nature.

We should tell ourselves, once and for all, that it is the first duty of the soul to become as happy, complete, independent, and great as lies in its power. Herein is no egoism, or pride. To become effectually generous and sincerely humble there must be within us a confident, tranquil, and clear comprehension of all that we owe to ourselves.

Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together ... Speech is too often ... the act of quite stifling and suspending thought, so that there is none to conceal ... Speech is of Time, silence is of Eternity ... It is idle to think that, by means of words, any real communication can ever pass from one man to another ...

Have we,_ asks Claude de Saint-Martin, the great __nknown philosopher,_ __ave 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 __he murmur of the gods.

However imperfect our conception of virtue, still let us cling to it; for a moment__ forgetfulness exposes us to all the malignant forces from without. The simplest lie to myself, buried though it may be in the silence of my soul, may yet be as dangerous to my inner liberty as an act of treachery on the marketplace. Widfom and Destiny