18 quotes
I know that you are looking for the Blue Bird, that is to say, the great secret of things and of happiness, so that Man may make our servitude still harder.
The Blue Bird (1908)
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.
The New Dictionary of Thoughts: A Cyclopedia of Quotations (1960)
It is the evil that lies in ourselves that is ever least tolerant of the evil that lies in others.
Wisdom and Destiny (1898)
Men's weaknesses are often necessary to the purposes of life.
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.
Each progressive spirit is opposed by a thousand mediocre minds appointed to guard the past.
Optimum Sports Nutrition (1993)
We possess, in the sacred and secret books of India, of which we know only an infinitesimal part, a cosmogony which no European conception has ever surpassed.
Mountain Paths (1919)
We begin to die as soon as we are born, and the end is linked to the beginning.
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.
My Dog (1906)
When we lose one we love, our bitterest tears are called forth by the memory of hours when we loved not enough.
Wisdom and Destiny (1898)
He's not quite blue yet, but that will come, you shall see! … Take him off quick to your little girl...
The Blue Bird (1908)
I count only the hours that are serene.
Falls back upon the earliest and greatest of Revelations, those of the Sacred Books of India with a Cosmogony which no European conception has ever surpassed.
Don't be alarmed … They are a little annoyed because Spring is late... Leave it to me; I will settle it all.
The Blue Bird (1908)
All our knowledge merely helps us to die a more painful death than the animals that know nothing. A day will come when science will turn upon its error and no longer hesitate to shorten our woes. A day will come when it will dare and act with certainty; when life, grown wiser, will depart silently at its hour, knowing that it has reached its term.
The truth that seems discouraging does in reality only transform the courage of those strong enough to accept it; and, in any event, a truth that disheartens, because it is true, is still of far more value than the most stimulating of falsehoods.
Wisdom and Destiny (1898)
We cannot tell how the religion of the Hindus came into being. When we become aware of it, we find it already complete in its broad outlines, its main principles. Not only is it complete, but the farther back we go, the more perfect it is, the more unadulterated, the more closely related to the loftiest speculations of our modern agnosticism.
I knew that if I was captured by the Germans I would be shot at once, since I have always been counted as an enemy of Germany because of my play, Le Bourgmestre de Stillemonde, which dealt with the conditions in Belgium during the German Occupation of 1918.