Maurice Maeterlinck Quotes

If the bee disappeared off the face of the earth, man would only have four years left to live.

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

All our knowledge merely helps us to die a more painful death than the animals that know nothing.

We all live in the sublime. Where else can we live? That is the only place of life.

Each progressive spirit is opposed by a thousand mediocre minds appointed to guard the past.

اگر مغز خالی هم مثل شکم خالی سرو صدا !می کرد، انسان خیلی عاقل تر از اینها بود

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

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.

As soon as we put something into words, we devalue it in a strange way. We think we have plunged into the depths of the abyss, and when we return to the surface the drop of water on our pale fingertips no longer resembles the sea from which it comes. We delude ourselves that we have discovered a wonderful treasure trove, and when we return to the light of day we find that we have brought back only false stones and shards of glass; and yet the treasure goes on glimmering in the dark, unaltered.

اگر مغز خالی هم مثل شکم خالی سرو صدا ! می کرد، انسان خیلی عاقل تر از اینها بود

Bees will not work except in darkness; Thought will not work except in Silence; neither will Virtue Work except in secrecy.

Besides, I myself have now for a long time ceased to look for anything more beautiful in this world, or more interesting, than the truth; or at least than the effort one is able to make towards the truth.

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

At every crossroads on the path that leads to the future tradition has placed 10 000 men to guard the past

خدا» یعنی» ناتوانی یک موجود که نمی تواند وجود نداشته باشد

Thousands of channels there are through which the beauty of your soul may sail even unto our thoughts. Above all is there the wonderful, central channel of love.

Can we conceive what humanity would be if it did not know the flowers?

.چیزی را که ما نمی توانیم بفهمیم ضد و نقیض زندگی انسان است زیرا از یک طرف طبیعت یا خدا انسان را آفریده که حتما مرتکب گناه می شود و از طرف دیگر به ما می گویند که هر کسی که مرتکب گناه !!!گردید در جهان مجازات خواهد دید بهتر این بود که از روز نخست ما را طوری می آفریدند که قدرت ارتکاب گناه را نداشته باشیم، نه آنکه ما را بیافرینند و بعد کیفر بدهند

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.

بیچاره شیطان در کره خاکی بدنام شده است.زیرا شیطان جز خود ما هیچکس نیست،ما برای اینکه خودمان را در حضور خود تبرئه کنیم،تمام کینه ها ،حسدها ،دشمنی ها و بیرحمی ها را در وجود موهومی به نام شیطان جا داده ایم

A thought that is almost beautiful – a thought that you speak not, but that you cherish within you at this moment, will irradiate you as though you were a transparent vase.

:نويسنده كتاب "عقل الملل" نوشته است با دنيا همانطور كه هست كنار بيائيد ولی اگر ما همانطوری كه دنيا هست با او كنار می آمديم، هنوز تمدن ما نظير تمدن دوره سنگ بود

We are alone, absolutely alone on this chance planet; and amid all the forms of life that surround us, not one, excepting the dog, has made an alliance with us. —Maurice Maeterlinck

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 ...

Can it be that man is nothing but a frightened god?

آدم تنها اگر در بهشت هم باشد به او خوش نمي گذرد. اما كسي كه به كتاب يا تحقيق علاقه مند است، هنگامي كه به مطالعه يا انديشه درباره محتواي آن كتاب مشغول است، جهنم تنهايي براي او بهترين بهشت هاست

برای چه توقع دارید كه خیالات، تصورات، احساسات، اقدامات و به طور خلاصه زندگی ما آزاد باشد و حال آنكه به چشم خود می بینیم كهكشانهای بزرگ كه منظومه خورشیدی ما در برابر آنها هیچ است، در حركات خود آزاد نیستند و مجبور شده اند كه خط سیر ویژه ای را پیموده و از قوانین خاصی پیروی كنند

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؟

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.

Unless we close our eyes we are always deceived.

El dolor es inevitable, el sufrimiento es opcional.

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

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

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.

It is sad to love and be unloved, but sadder still to be unable to love.

When the Devil was a woman, When Lilith wound Her ebony hair in heavy braids, And framed Her pale features all 'round With Botticelli's tangled thoughts, When she, smiling softly, Ringed all her slim fingers In golden bands with brilliant stones, When she leafed through Villiers And loved Huysmans, When she fathomed Maeterlinck's silence And bathed her Soul In Gabriel d'Annunzio's colors, She even laughed And as she laughed, The little princess of serpents sprang Out of her mouth. Then the most beautiful of she-devils Sought after the serpent, She seized the Queen of Serpents With her ringed finger, So that she wound and hissed Hissed, hissed And spit venom. In a heavy copper vase; Damp earth, Black damp earth She scattered upon it. Lightly her great hands caressed This heavy copper vase All around, Her pale lips lightly sang Her ancient curse. Like a children's rhyme her curses chimed, Soft and languid Languid as the kisses, That the damp earth drank From her mouth, But life arose in the vase, And tempted by her languid kisses, And tempted by those sweet tones, From the black earth slowly there crept, Orchids - When the most beloved Adorns her pale features before the mirror All 'round with Botticelli's adders, There creep sideways from the copper vase, Orchids- Devil's blossoms which the ancient earth, Wed by Lilith's curse To serpent's venom, has borne to the light Orchids- The Devil's blossoms- "The Diary Of An Orange Tree

Be good at the depth of you, and you will discover that those who surround you will be good even to the same depths. Nothing responds more infallibly to the secret cry of goodness than the secret cry of goodness that is near. While you are actively good in the invisible, all those who approach you will unconsciously do things that they could not do by the side of any other man.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

… 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. …

There may be human joy in doing good with definite purpose, but they who do good expecting nothing in return know a joy that is divine.

سئل حكيم : هل هناك أقبح من البخل ؟ قال : نعم الكريم إذا تحدث بإحسانه لمن أحسن إليه.

Evităm să ne gândim la moarte până când nu mai avem forța, n-aș spune, de a gândi, ci chiar de a respira.

We can be born thus more than once; and each birth brings us a little nearer to our God.

But cannot we live as though we always loved? It was this that the saints and heroes did; this and nothing more.

Niemand is waarlijk mijn vriend, voordat we geleerd hebben in elkanders tegenwoordigheid te zwijgen.

It feels like I’ve got all the flames in hell burning in my head.

At every crossway on the road that leads to the future, each progressive spirit is opposed by a thousand men appointed to guard the past.

Sobald wir etwas aussprechen, entwerten wir es seltsam. Wir glauben in die Tiefe der Abgründe hinabgetaucht zu sein, und wenn wir wieder an die Oberfläche kommen, gleicht der Wassertropfen an unseren bleichen Fingerspitzen nicht mehr dem Meere, dem er entstammt. Wir wähnen eine Schatzgrube wunderbarer Schätze entdeckt zu haben, und wenn wir wieder ans Tageslicht kommen, haben wir nur falsche Steine und Glasscherben mitgebracht; und trotzdem schimmert der Schatz im Finstern unverändert.

(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")

We subdue that in others which we have learned to subdue in ourselves. Around the upright man there is drawn a wide circle of peace, within which the arrows of evil soon cease to fall; nor have his fellows the power to inflict moral suffering upon him.

This invisible and divine goodness, of which I only speak here because of its being one of the surest and nearest signs of the unceasing activity of our soul, this invisible and divine goodness ennobles, in decisive fashion, all that it has unconsciously touched.

Must we always be warned, and can we only fall on our knees when some one is there to tell us that God is passing by? If you have loved profoundly you have needed no one to tell you that your soul was a thing as great in itself as the world; that the stars, the flowers, the waves of night and sea were not solitary; that it was on the threshold of appearances that everything began, but nothing ended, and that the very lips you kissed belonged to a creature who was loftier, much purer, and much more beautiful than the one whom your arms enfolded.

It is well to believe that there needs but a little more thought, a little more courage, more love, more devotion to life, a little more eagerness, one day to fling open wide the portals of joy and of truth.

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؟؟؟

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.

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.

Our real life is not the life we live, and we feel that our deepest, nay, our most intimate thoughts are quite apart from ourselves, for we are other than our thoughts and our dreams. And it is only at special moments – it may be by merest accident – that we live our own life. Will the day ever dawn when we shall be what we are? …

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.

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.

Look upon men and things with the inner eye, with its form and desire, never forgetting that the shadow they throw as they pass by, upon hillock or wall, is but the fleeting image of a mightier shadow, which, like the wing of an imperishable swan, floats over every soul that draws near to their soul. Do not believe that thoughts such as these can be mere ornaments, and without influence upon the lives of those who admit them. It is far more important that one’s life should be perceived than that it should be transformed; for no sooner has it been perceived, than it transforms itself of its own accord.

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

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

A single hour snatched from death outweighs a whole existence of tortures.

Bees will not work except in darkness; Thought will not work except in Silence; neither will Virtue Work except in secrecy.

… signs of a life that we cannot explain are everywhere, vibrating by the side of the life of every day.

yet may it not be that these questions are idle, and we who are putting them to you mere childish dreamers, hedged round with error and doubt?

the more a hive inclines to its ruin, the more males it will produce

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. Than 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.

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?

I have only my brightness, which Man does not understand…. But I watch over him to the end of his days…. Never forget that I am speaking to you in every spreading moonbeam, in every twinkling star, in every dawn that rises, in every lamp that is lit, in every good and bright thought of your soul…

If I tell some one that I love him – as I may have told a hundred others – my words will convey nothing to him; but the silence which will ensue, if I do indeed love him, will make clear in what depths lie the roots of my love, and will in its turn give birth to a conviction, that shall itself be silent; and in the course of a lifetime, this silence and this conviction will never again be the same. …

It is not the arrival of death, but the departure of life that is appalling. It is not death, but life that we must act upon. It is not death that attacks life; it is life that wrongfully resists death.

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 colourless thought, and most nerveless gestures do not drop into nothingness; …

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 only too evident that the invisible agitations of the kingdoms within us are arbitrarily set on foot by the thoughts we shelter. Our myriad intuitions are the veiled queens who steer our course through life, though we have no words in which to speak of them. How strangely do we diminish a thing as soon as we try to express it in words!

Are we to believe that earth marks the most advanced stage and the most favoured experiment? What, then, can the thought of the universe have done and against what darkness must it have struggled, to have come no farther than this?

Our lives must be spent seeking our God, for God hides; but His artifices, once they be known, seem so simple and smiling! From that moment, the merest nothing reveals His presence, and the greatness of our life depends on so little.

We suffer but little from suffering itself; but from the manner wherein we accept it overwhelming sorrow may spring. We are wrong in believing that it comes from without. For indeed we create it within us, out of our very substance.

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

Pero la hora magnífica pertenece a las rosas de mayo. Entonces, hasta mas allá de donde alcanza la vista, desde las vertientes de las colinas hasta las hondonadas de las llanuras, entre diques de viñas y de olivares, afluyen de todas partes como un río de pétalos del que emergen las casas y los árboles, un río del color que damos a la juventud, a la salud y a la alegría. Diríase que el aroma a la vez cálido y fresco, pero sobretodo espacioso que entreabre el cielo, emana directamente los manantiales de la beatitud.

What are we to do now? Must we hate the enemy to the end of time? The burden of hatred is the heaviest that man can bear upon this earth; and we should faint under the weight of it. On the other hand, we do not wish once more to be the dupes and victims of confidence and love.

Through the whole course of history, two distinct willpowers have been noticed that would seem to be the opposed, elemental manifestations of the spirit of our globe, the one seeking only evil, injustice, tyranny and suffering, while the other strives for liberty, the right, radiance and joy.

Wisdom is the lamp of love, and love is the oil of the lamp. Love, sinking deeper, grows wiser; and wisdom that springs up aloft comes ever the nearer to love. Love is the food of wisdom; wisdom the food of love; a circle of light within which those who love, clasp the hands of those who are wise.

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 soon as we put something into words, we devalue it in a strange way…We delude ourselves that we have discovered a wonderful treasure trove, and when we return to the light of day we find that we have brought back only false stones and shards of glass; and yet the treasure goes on glimmering in the dark, unaltered.

Perhaps we do not yet know what the word “to love” means. There are within us lives in which we love unconsciously. To love thus means more than to have pity, to make inner sacrifices, to be anxious to help and give happiness; it is a thing that lies a thousand fathoms deeper, where our softest, swiftest, strongest words cannot reach it. At moments we might believe it to be a recollection, furtive but excessively keen, of great primitive unity. There is in this love a force that nothing can resist.

However imperfect our conception of virtue, still let us cling to it; for a moment’s 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

It is a thing that knows no limit, and before it all men are equal; and the silence of king or slave, in presence of death, or grief, or love, reveals the same features, hides beneath its impenetrable mantle the self-same treasure. For this is the essential silence of our soul, our most inviolable sanctuary, and its secret can never be lost;

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

Je ne sais pas ce que je dis... Je ne sais pas ce que je sais... Je ne dit plus ce que je veux...

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

Should we not invariably act in this life as though the God whom our heart desires with its highest desire were watching our every action?

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

El dolor es el alimento esencial del amor; cualquier amor que no se haya nutrido de un poco de dolor puro, muere

Il y a parfois du côté de l’ombre des vérités tout aussi intéressantes que du côté de la lumière.

Het verleden is altijd tegenwoordig. (The past is always present.)

Death descends upon us to take away a life or change its form: let us judge it by what it does and not by what we do before it comes and after it is gone.

Pelléas was born in Paris, and I had taken him to the country.

We are alone, absolutely alone on this chance planet; and amid all the forms of life that surround us, not one, excepting the dog, has made an alliance with us.

I think I palsied fate; and I long took pride in this gift.

She was born without reason … to die; and she dies without reason….

There is always a wonderful silence here…. One could hear the water sleep….

Somos de tal naturaleza que nada nos lleva tan lejos y tan alto como los impulsos de nuestros errores

Human experience renders it daily more clear that the highest thought we can attain will long be inferior still to the mysterious truth we seek.

As gold and silver are weighed in pure water, so does the soul test its weight in silence, and the words that we let fall have no meaning apart from the silence that wraps them round.

And it is because we all of us know of this sombre power and its perilous manifestations, that we stand in so deep a dread of silence. We can bear, when need must be, the silence of ourselves, that of isolation: but the silence of many - silence multiplied - and above all the silence of a crowd - these are supernatural burdens, whose inexplicable weight brings dread to the mightiest soul.

No nation permits herself to be coerced to the one crime that man cannot pardon. It is of her own accord that she hastens towards it; her chief has no need to persuade, it is she who urges him on.

Nations have the government which they deserve, or rather, the government which they have is truly no more than the magnified and public projection of the private morality and mentality of the nation.

_ the psychology of which I speak is transcendental, and throws light on the direct relationship that exists between soul and soul, and on the sensibility as well as the extraordinary presence of the soul.

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.

دنیا برای چه ما و سایر موجودات را به وجود آورده؟... آیا برای این ما را به وجود آورد که خود را تنها می دید و در تنهایی خویشتن را سعادتمند نمی دانست؟... و آیا برای این که او سعادتمند نیست ما و سایر موجودات هم سعادتمند نیستیم؟ ولی فراموش نکنید که وقتی ما در خصوص تصمیمات جهان، آفریننده و یا هر چیز دیگر که به جایش بگذارید، صحبت می کنیم عینا مثل است که یک پشه بخواهد در خصوص تصمیمات ما که انسان هستیم صحبت و تفکر نماید و یا کور مادرزاد بخواهد رنگ های مختلف را توصیف کند

خیلی غریب است که انیشتن و طرفداران او با این جرات و جسارت می گویند که از هر میلیون ستاره که به نظر ما می رسد نهصد هزار تای آن ها نسخه بدل و یا موهوم است ولی هیچ یک از آن ها نمی گوید که آنچه موهوم می باشد نظریه ی آن هاست نه ستارگان آسمان

To love thus is to love according to the soul; and there is no soul that does not respond to this love. For the soul of man is a guest that has gone hungry these centuries back, and never has it to be summoned twice to the nuptial feast.

I tried to lift myself above the fray; but, the higher I rose, the more I saw of the madness and the horror of it, of the justice of one cause and the infamy of the other. It is possible that one day, when time has wearied remembrance and restored the ruins, wise men will tell us that we were mistaken and that our standpoint was not lofty enough; but they will say it because they will no longer know what we know, nor will they have seen what we have seen. Maurice Maeterlinck. Nice , 1916.

And indeed, if we had only the courage to listen to the simplest, the nearest, most pressing voice of our conscience, and be deaf to all else, it were doubtless our solitary duty to relieve the suffering about us to the greatest extent in our power.

We are face to face with reality now; let us look at it well and pronounce our sentence; for this is the moment when we hold the proofs in our hands, when the elements of crime are hot before us and shout out the truth that soon will fade from our memory.

Then he stopped, in amazement. 'Why he's blue!' he cried. 'It's my dove just the same, but he has turned blue - ! Why, it's the Blue Bird we were looking for! We have been miles and miles, and he was here all the time! He was here at home! Oh, how wonderful!

All knowledge, the totality of all questions and all answers, is contained in the dog. —Franz Kafka We are alone, absolutely alone on this chance planet; and amid all the forms of life that surround us, not one, excepting the dog, has made an alliance with us. —Maurice Maeterlinck If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man. —Mark Twain A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than he loves himself. —Josh Billings

I have lost, within these last few days, a little bull-dog. He had just completed the sixth month of his brief existence. He had no history. His intelligent eyes opened to look out upon the world, to love mankind, then closed again on the cruel secrets of death.

...el menor secreto de un objeto, que vemos en la naturaleza que no es humana, toma quizás una parte más directa en el profundo enigma de nuestros fines y de nuestros orígenes que el secreto de nuestras pasiones más arrebatadoras y con sentido más complaciente estudiadas

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.

Why not admit that it is not our paramount duty to weep with all those who are weeping, to suffer with all who are sad, to expose our heart to the passer-by for him to caress or stab? Tears and suffering and wounds are helpful to us only when they do not discourage our life.

خیام فیلسوف ایرانی چنین می گوید از دو خال خارج نيست يا خدا قبلا ميداند كه من چه خواهم كرد و يا نميداند.اگر نميداند كه دراين صورت خدا نيست و در صورتيكه ميداند چگونه انتظار دارد كه من كاری بر خلاف دانايی او بكنم و با رعايت اين دو نكته چگونه مرا بعد از مرگ مسئول نموده و كيفر خواهد داد.

since the days of the great martyrs, that woman was ready with the same gift of self, the same patience, the same sacrifices, the same greatness of soul and was about—less perhaps in blood than in tears, for it is always on her that sorrow ends by falling—to prove herself the rival and the peer of man.

the further we go and the more closely we study, the more plainly is it brought home to us that we merely are waifs shipwrecked on the ocean of nature; and ever and anon, from a sudden wave that shall be more transparent than others, there leaps forth a fact that in an instant confounds all that we imagine we knew

Death and death alone is what we must consult about life; and not some vague future or survival, in which we shall not be present. It is our own end; and everything happens in the interval between death and now. Do not talk to me of those imaginary prolongations which wield over us the childish spell of number; do not talk to me—to me who am to die outright—of societies and peoples! There is no reality, there is no true duration, save that between the cradle and the grave. The rest is mere bombast, show, delusion! They call me a master because of some magic in my speech and thoughts; but I am a frightened child in the presence of death!

نويسنده كتاب "عقل الملل" نوشته است كه : "با دنيا همانطور كه هست كنار بيائيد." ولی اگر ما همانطوری كه دنيا هست با او كنار می آمديم هنوز تمدن ما نظير تمدن دوره سنگ بود. خوشبختانه اشخاصی هستند كه با دنيا طور ديگری كنار می آيند و همواره بر خلاف خط سير آن حركت می كنند و در سايه وجود اين اشخاص است كه ما دارای تمدن كنونی شده ايم.

Observamos aquí, una vez más, que todo el genio reside en la especie, la vida o la naturaleza; y que el individuo es más o menos estúpido. Sólo en el hombre hay emulación real entre las dos inteligencias, tendencia cada vez más precisa, cada vez más activa a una especie de equilibrio que es el gran secreto de nuestro porvenir.

A superior atmosphere exists, in which we all know each other; and there is a mysterious truth – deeper far than the material truth - to which we at once have recourse, when we try to form a conception of a stranger. Have we not all experienced these things, which take place in the impenetrable regions of almost astral humanity?

We have not to gain his confidence or his friendship: he is born our friend; while his eyes are still closed, already he believes in us: even before his birth, he has given himself to man. But the word "friend" does not exactly depict his affectionate worship. He loves us and reveres us as though we had drawn him out of nothing.

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, “What 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?

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

The scent of a flower, the flight of sea-gulls around a cliff, a cornfield in sunshine—these stir him to strange delight. A deed of bravery, nobility, or of simple devotion; a mere brotherly act of kindness, the unconscious sacrifice of the peasant who toils all day to feed and clothe his children—these awake his warm and instant sympathy.

one which seems to be deliberately seeking the downfall of the human race. And we wonder uneasily what the state of the world will be after the great trial and what will be left of it and what will be the future of this stunted race, shorn of all the best and noblest part of it. The problem is certainly one of the darkest that have ever vexed the minds of men.

May it not be the supreme aim of life thus to bring to birth the inexplicable within ourselves; and do we know how much we add to ourselves when we awake something of the incomprehensible that slumbers in every corner? Here you have awakened love which will not fall asleep again. … nothing can ever separate two souls which, for an instant, ‘have been good together.

Bạn hiểu về hạnh phúc không giống tôi, và dù bạn có hùng hồn nhắc đi nhắc lại với tôi về nó, thì nó cũng chẳng ngấm được vào nội tạng của cuộc đời tôi. Cần để tôi tạo ra tư tưởng về hạnh phúc trong chính bản thân mình, bằng sức lực của riêng mình. Nhưng dù sao, khi nói về cách hiểu của bạn, bản thân bạn cũng không biết là bạn đã giúp tôi có được cách hiểu của riêng mình.

Son el alma del estío, el reloj de los minutos de abundancia, el ala diligente de los perfumes que vuelan, la inteligencia de los rayos de luz que se ciernen, el murmullo de las caridades que vibran, el canto de la atmósfera que descansa, y su vuelo es la señal visible, la nota convencida y musical de las pequeñas alegrías innumerables que nacen del calor y viven en la luz

It is well to believe that there needs but a little more thought, a little more courage, more love, more devotion to life, a little more eagerness, one day to fling open wide the portals of joy and of truth. And this thing may still come to pass. Let us hope that one day all mankind will be happy and wise; and though this day never should dawn, to have hoped for it cannot be wrong.

And all this, I repeat, occurred without any material necessity, from no other motive than a fine sense of honour and a magnificent surge of admiration and pity for a small foreign nation that was being unjustly martyred. We cannot repeat it too often: here, as in the case of the sacrifice which Belgium and England offered to the ideal of honour, is a new and unprecedented fact in history

Flowers preceded insects upon this earth; when the latter appeared, the flower had therefore to adapt an entirely new mechanism to the habits of these unexpected collaborators. This fact alone, geologically indisputable, amid all that we do not know, is enough to establish evolution, and does not this rather vague word mean, in the final analysis, adaptation, modification, intelligent progress?

Thanks to the heroism of the Allies, the hour is approaching when the hordes of William the Madman will quit the soil of afflicted Belgium. After what they have done in cold blood, what excesses, what disasters must we not expect of the last convulsions of their rage? Our anguish is all the more poignant in that they are at this moment fighting in the most ancient and most precious portion of Flanders.

Treasures have perished that were numbered among the noblest and dearest possessions of mankind; monuments have disappeared which nothing can replace; and the half of a nation, among all nations the most attached to its old simple habits, its humble homes, is at present wandering along the roads of Europe. Thousands of innocent people have been massacred; and of those who remain nearly all are doomed to poverty and hunger.

Do we know what it is that dies in our dead, or even if anything dies? Whatever our religious faith may be, there is at any rate one place where they cannot die. That place is within ourselves; and, if this unhappy mother went beyond the truth, she was yet nearer to it than those despairing ones who nourish the mournful certainty that nothing survives of those whom they loved. She felt too keenly what we do not feel keenly enough.

You shall not find, in nature's immense crucible, a single living being that has shown a like suppleness, a similar abundance of forms, the same prodigious faculty of accommodation to our wishes. This is because, in the world which we know, among the different and primitive geniuses that preside over the evolution of the several species, there exists not one, excepting that of the dog, that ever gave a thought to the presence of man.

one of the most strenuous centres of human industry and activity and the cradle of our great liberties. Such as it was yesterday—alas, that I cannot say, such as it is to-day!—this square, with the enormous but unspeakably harmonious mass of those market-buildings, at once powerful and graceful, wild, gloomy, proud, yet genial, was one of the most wonderful and perfect spectacles that could be seen in any town on this old earth of ours.

If it be true, as I believe, that humanity is worth just as much as the sum total of latent heroism which it contains, then we may declare that humanity was never stronger nor more exemplary than now and that it is at this moment reaching one of its highest points and capable of braving everything and hoping everything. And it is for this reason that, despite our present sadness, we are entitled to congratulate ourselves and to rejoice.

We know that, if a third or a fourth part of the fabulous sums expended on extermination and destruction had been devoted to works of peace, all the iniquities that poison the air we breathe would have been triumphantly redressed and that the social question, the one great question, that matter of life and death which justice demands that posterity should face, would have found its definite solution, once and for all, in a happiness which now perhaps even our sons and grandsons will not realize. We know that the disappearance of two or three million young existences, cut down when they were on the point of bearing fruit, will leave in history a void that will not be easily filled, even as we know that among those dead were mighty intellects, treasures of genius which will not come back again and which contained inventions and discoveries that will now perhaps be lost to us for centuries. We

We believe we have dived down to the most unfathomable depths, and when we reappear on the surface, the drop of water that glistens on our trembling finger-tips no longer resembles the sea from which it came. We believe we have discovered a grotto that is stored with bewildering treasure; we come back to the light of day, and the gems we have brought are false – mere pieces of glass – and yet does the treasure shine on, unceasingly, in the darkness!

Death has come and atoned for all. I have no grievance against the soul of the man before me. Instinctively do I recognise that it soars high above the gravest faults and the cruellest 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. …

Las más bellas morales humanas están todas fundadas sobre la idea de que es preciso luchar y sufrir para purificarse, elevarse y perfeccionarse; pero ninguna trata de explicar por qué es necesario empezar de nuevo sin cesar. ¿Dónde va, pues, en qué abismos infinitos se pierde, desde eternidades sin límites, lo que se ha elevado en nosotros y no ha dejado vestigios? ¿Por qué si el Anima Mundi es soberanamente sabia ha querido estas luchas y estos sufrimientos que jamás han llegado y que, por consecuencia, jamás llegarán al fin? ¿Por qué no haber puesto, al primer esfuerzo, todas las cosas al punto de perfección a que nosotros creemos que tienden? ¿Por qué es preciso merecer su dicha? Pero ¿qué méritos pueden tener los que luchan o sufren mejor que sus hermanos, puesto que la fuerza o la virtud que les anima no la tienen más que porque un poder exterior la ha puesto en ellos más propiciamente que en otros?

Pero no me ocupo aquí sino de la salvia más común, la que recubre en este momento, como para celebrar el paso de la primavera, de colgaduras violadas todos los muros de mis terrazas de olivos. Les aseguro que los balcones de los grandes palacios de mármol que esperan a los reyes nunca tuvieron adorno más lujoso, ni más feliz, ni más fragante. Hasta parecen percibirse los perfumes de las claridades del sol cuando es más caliente que nunca, cuando promedia el día...

In all truth might it be said that beauty is the unique aliment of our soul, for in all places does it search for beauty, and it perishes not of hunger even in the most degraded of lives. For indeed nothing of beauty can pass by and be altogether unperceived. Perhaps does it never pass by save only in our unconsciousness, but its action is no less puissant in gloom of night than by light of day; the joy it procures may be less tangible, but other difference there is none.

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.

Elles sont l’âme de l’été, l’horloge des minutes d’abondance, l’aile diligente des parfums qui s’élancent, le murmure des clartés qui tressaillent, le chant de l’atmosphère qui s’étire et se repose. Et leur vol est le signe visible, la note musicale des petites joies innombrables qui naissent de la chaleur et vivent dans la lumière. À qui les a connues, à qui les a aimées, un été sans abeilles semble aussi malheureux et aussi imparfait que s’il était sans oiseaux et sans fleurs.

Oh, and I almost forgot to say, Neighbour Berlingot's little girl actually did get well, when her brother brought her the beautiful bird in his cage. Did I hear someone ask whether the bird had changed colours, and really was blue? Well, if Tyltyl and Mytyl's joy and happiness gave him a magnificent blue plumage, isn't that enough? Without knowing it, these gentle children had discovered Light's great secret, which is that we draw nearer to happiness by trying to give it to others!

خدا محال است که نوع انسان بتواند به خدا معتقد نشود و من از گفته ی بعضی از بزرگان کلیسا حیرت می کنم که می گویند مترلینگ به خدا معتقد نیست. آری همه کس به خدا معتقد است ولی هرکس عقیده ی خاصی نسبت به او دارد که متناسب با طرز فکر اوست و همواره خدایی که می پرستیم شبیه خود ماست که صفات و خصائل مارا توصیف می نماید. اگر اندیشه ی شما هزار مرتبه بزرگ تر از حالا باشد خدای شما هم هزار مرتبه پاک تر خواهد گردید. هرگز از اندیشه خود یک خدای منتقم و خونخوار و سفاک بیرون نیاورید تا ناچار باشید از خدای خود بترسید.

After the final victory, when the enemy is crushed—as crushed he will be—efforts will be made to enlist our sympathy, to move us to pity. We shall be told that the unfortunate German people were merely the victims of their monarch and their feudal caste; that no blame attaches to the Germany we know, which is so sympathetic and so cordial—the Germany of quaint old houses and open-hearted greeting, the Germany that sits under its lime-trees beneath the clear light of the moon—but only to Prussia, hateful, arrogant Prussia

And, when I saw him thus, young, ardent and believing, bringing me, in some wise, from the depths of unwearied nature, quite fresh news of life and trusting and wonderstruck, as though he had been the first of his race that came to inaugurate the earth and as though we were still in the first days of the world's existence, I envied the gladness of his certainty, compared it with the destiny of man, still plunging on every side into darkness, and said to myself that the dog who meets with a good master is the happier of the two.

And if, to-morrow, leaving their feelings toward us untouched, nature were to give them the intelligence and the weapons wherewith to conquer us, I confess that I should distrust the hasty vengeance of the horse, the obstinate reprisals of the ass and the maddened meekness of the sheep. I should shun the cat as I should shun the tiger; and even the good cow, solemn and somnolent, would inspire me with but a wary confidence. As for the hen, with her round, quick eye, as when discovering a slug or a worm, I am sure that she would devour me without a thought.

Sometimes the male flowers rise to the surface when there are not yet any pistillated flowers in the vicinity. And at other times, when low water permits them easily to reach their companions, they still break their stems no less automatically and uselessly. I maintain here, once again, that the whole genius rests in the species, in life or nature, and that the individual on the whole is stupid. Only in mankind do we find true emulation of the two intelligences, an increasingly precise and active tendency toward a kind of balance that is the great secret of our future.

We are the prisoners of an infinity without outlet, wherein nothing perishes, wherein everything is dispersed, but nothing lost. Neither a body nor a thought can drop out of the universe, out of time and space. Not an atom of our flesh, not a quiver of our nerves will go where they will cease to be, for there is no place where anything ceases to be. The brightness of a star extinguished millions of years ago still wanders in the ether where our eyes will perhaps behold it this very night, pursuing its endless road. It is the same with all that we see, as with all that we do not see.

he who takes upon himself to write pledges himself to say nothing that can derogate from the respect and love which we owe to all men. I have had to utter these words; and I am as much surprised as saddened at what I have been constrained to say by the force of events and of truth. I loved Germany and numbered friends there, who now, dead or living, are alike dead to me. I thought her great and upright and generous; and to me she was ever kindly and hospitable. But there are crimes that obliterate the past and close the future. In rejecting hatred I should have shown myself a traitor to love.

We cannot take leave of the aquatic plants without briefly mentioning the life of the most romantic of them all: the legendary Val­lisneria, an Hydrocharad whose nuptials form the most tragic episode in the love-history of the flowers. The Vallisneria is a rather insignificant herb, possess­ing none of the strange grace of the Water-lily or of certain submersed comas. But it seems as though nature had delighted in giving it a beautiful idea. The whole existence of the little plant is spent at the bottom of the water, in a sort of half-slumber, until the moment of the wedding-hour in which it aspires to a new life. Then the female flower slowly uncoils the long spiral of its peduncle, rises, emerges and floats and blossoms on the sur­face of the pond. From a neighbouring stem, the male flowers, which see it through the sunlit water, soar in their turn, full of hope, towards the one that rocks, that awaits them, that calls them to a magic world. But, when they have come half-way, they feel themselves suddenly held back: their stalk, the very source of their life, is too short; they will never reach the abode of light, the only spot in which the union of the stamens and the pistil can be achieved! .

Inexhaustible treasury, receptacle of windfalls, the jewel of the house! You shall have your share of it, an exquisite and surreptitious share; but it does not do to seem to know where it is. You are strictly forbidden to rummage in it. Man in this way prohibits many pleasant things, and life would be dull indeed and your days empty if you had to obey all the orders of the pantry, the cellar and the dining-room. Luckily, he is absent-minded and does not long remember the instructions which he lavishes. He is easily deceived. You achieve your ends and do as you please, provided you have the patience to await the hour.

Sobre las vallisnerias: "(...), para elevarse hasta la felicidad, rompen deliberadamente el lazo que los une a la existencia. Se arrancan de su pedúnculo, y con un incomparable impulso, entre perlas de alegría, sus pétalos van a romper la superficie del agua. Heridos de muerte, pero radiantes y libres, flotan un momento al lado de sus indolentes prometidas; se verifica la unión, después de lo cual los sacrificios van a perecer a merced de la corriente, mientras que la esposa ya madre cierra su corola en que vive su último soplo, arrolla su espiral y vuelve a bajar a las profundidades para madurar en ellas el fruto del beso heroico

No, it is heroism freely donned, deliberately and unanimously hailed, heroism on behalf of an idea and a sentiment, in other words, heroism in its clearest, purest and most virginal form, a disinterested and whole-hearted sacrifice for that which men regard as their duty to themselves, to their kith and kin, to mankind and to the future. If life and personal safety were more precious than the idea of honour, of patriotism and of fidelity to tradition and the race, there was, I repeat, and there is still a choice to be made; and never perhaps in any war was the choice easier, for never did men feel more free, never indeed were they more free to choose.

Is there any more cruel inadvertence or ordeal in na­ture Picture the tragedy of that longing, the inac­cessible so nearly attained, the transparent fatality, the impossible with not a visible obstacle! . . . It would be insoluble, like our own tragedy upon this earth, were it not that an unex­pected element is mingled with it. Did the males foresee the disillusion to which they would be sub­jected? One thing is certain, that they have locked up in their hearts a bubble of air, even as we lock up in our souls a thought of desperate deliverance. It is as though they hesitated for a moment; then, with a magnificent effort, the finest, the most supernatural that I know of in the annals of the insects and the flowers, in order to rise to happiness they deliberately break the bond that attaches them to life. They tear themselves from their peduncle and, with an incomparable flight, amid pearly beads of glad­ness, their petals dart up and break the surface of the water. Wounded to death, but radiant and free, they float for a moment beside their heedless brides and the union is accom­plished, whereupon the victims drift away to perish, while the wife, already a mother, closes her corolla, in which lives their last breath, rolls up her spiral and descends to the depths, there to ripen the fruit of the heroic kiss.

We did what we could to preserve it; we could do no more. The most heroic of armies are powerless to prevent the bandits whom they are driving back from murdering the women and children or from deliberately and uselessly destroying all that they find along their path of retreat. There is only one hope left us: the immediate and imperious intervention of the neutral powers. It is towards them that we turn our tortured gaze. Two great nations notably—Italy and the United States—hold in their hands the fate of these last treasures, whose loss would one day be reckoned among the heaviest and the most irreparable that have been suffered in the course of long centuries of human civilization

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....

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.

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.

We have taken for a long time a rather foolish pride in believing ourselves to be miraculous beings, unique and wonderfully open to chance, probably fallen from another world, without clear ties to the rest of life and, in any case, endowed with an unusual, incomparable, awful ability. It is far preferable to be nowhere near so prodigious, for we have learned that prodigies soon vanish in the normal evolution of nature. It is much more consoling to observe that we follow the same path as the soul of this great world, that we have the same ideas, the same hopes, the same trials, and—were it not for our specific dream of justice and pity—almost the same feelings. It is much more calming to assure ourselves that, to better our lot, to utilize the forces, the opportunities, the laws of matter, we employ methods exactly the same as those that the soul uses to illuminate and order its unruly and unconscious areas; that there are no other methods, that we are in the midst of truth, that we are in our rightful place and at home in this universe molded by unknown substances, whose thought is not impenetrable and hostile but analogous or apposite to our own.

I HAVE NEVER FOR ONE INSTANT SEEN CLEARLY WITHIN MYSELF. HOW THEN WOULD YOU HAVE ME JUDGE THE DEEDS OF OTHERS? —MAURICE MAETERLINCK

Maurice Maeterlinck’s play The Blue Bird.

This vignette reminds me of Maurice Maeterlinck’s dictum: “At every crossway on the road that leads to the future, tradition has placed, against each of us, ten thousand men to guard the past.

What if it is somehow our misunderstood, unacknowledged, looping relationship to our future that makes us ill—or at least, that contributes to our suffering—and not our failure to connect appropriately to our past? Could some neuroses be time loops misrecognized and denied, the way we haunt ourselves from our futures and struggle to reframe it as being about our past history? The next two chapters will examine this question through the lives of two famously precognitive and neurotic writers. Both show strikingly how creativity may travel together with trauma and suffering along the resonating string that connects us to the Not Yet. 12 Fate, Free Will, and Futility — Morgan Robertson’s Tiresias Complex Who can tell us of the power which events possess … Are their workings in the past or in the future; and are the more powerful of them those that are no longer, or those that are not yet? Is it to-day or to-morrow that moulds us? 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, “The Pre-Destined” (1914) The monkey wrench precognition appears to throw into the problem of free will is an important part of the force field inhibiting serious consideration of it by many people in our culture. It may have been a fear of the inevitability of things prophesied that made the whole subject so anathema to Freud, for example. In a society that places priority on success and the individual’s responsibility for its attainment, it is both taken for granted and a point of fierce conviction that we choose and that our choices are not completely made for us by the inexorable clockwork of matter—the Newtonian inertia that brought the Titanic and the Iceberg, mere inert objects, together. Scientists may pay lip service to determinism—Freud himself did—but the inevitability of material processes due to causes “pushing” from the past somehow feels less restrictive than a block universe in which our fate is already set. The radical predestination implied by time loops may rob “great men” of their ability to claim credit for their successes.

In some strange way we devalue things as soon as we give utterance to them. We believe we have dived to the uttermost depths of the abyss, and yet when we return to the surface the drop of water on our pallid finger-tips no longer resembles the sea from which it came. We think we have discovered a hoard of wonderful treasure-trove, yet when we emerge again into the light of day we see that all we have brought back with us is false stones and chips of glass. But for all this, the treasure goes on glimmering in the darkness, unchanged.

There comes a moment in life," he says, "when moral beauty seems more urgent, more penetrating, than intellectual beauty; when all that the mind has treasured must be bathed in the greatness of soul, lest it perish in the sandy desert, forlorn as the river that seeks in vain for the sea.

Above all, let us never forget that an act of goodness is in itself an act of happiness. It is the flower of a long inner life of joy and contentment; it tells of peaceful hours and days on the sunniest heights of our soul.

There comes a moment in life when moral beauty seems more urgent, more penetrating, than intellectual beauty; when all that the mind has treasured must be bathed in the greatness of soul, lest it perish in the sandy desert, forlorn as a river that seeks in vain for the sea.

An avowed anti-Catholic, Maurice Maeterlinck, the twentieth-century Belgian philosopher and playwright, weighed in with: “An act of goodness is of itself an act of happiness. No reward coming after the event can compare with the sweet reward that went with it.

Dueling was accepted in artistic circles as well with the young Marcel Proust challenging a critic of his work while Claude Debussy drew a challenge from the Belgian writer Maurice Maeterlinck for not casting his mistress in Debussy’s opera Pelléas et Mélisande, for which Maeterlinck had written the libretto.14 In Germany Kessler challenged a bureaucrat who blamed him for a scandal caused by a show of Rodin drawings of naked young men. The only European country where dueling was no longer accepted as something that gentlemen did was Great Britain. But then, as the Kaiser was fond of saying, the British were a nation of shopkeepers.

Our consciousness is our home, our refuge from the caprice of fate, our centre of happiness and strength. But these things have been said so often that we need do no more than refer to them, and indicate them as our starting-point. Ennoblement comes to man in the degree that his consciousness quickens, and the nobler the man has become, the profounder must consciousness be. Admirable exchange takes place here; and even as love is insatiable in its craving for love, so is consciousness insatiable in its craving for growth, for moral uplifting; and moral uplifting for ever is yearning for consciousness.

Dans la ruche, l'individu n'est rien, il n'a qu'une existence conditionnelle, il n'est qu'un moment indifférent, un organe ailé de l'espèce. Toute sa vie est un sacrifice total à l'être innombrable et perpétuel dont il fait partie.