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Maeterlinck, Maurice - Misc quotes - Therein lay his secret
Identifier
013861
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
from Inner Beauty
"For my part," said a sage to me one day, "I have never come across a single woman who did not bring to me something that was great." He was great himself first of all; therein lay his secret.
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If at this moment you think or say something that is too beautiful to be true in you—if you have but endeavored to think or say it to-day, on the morrow it will be true. We must try to be more beautiful than ourselves.
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All the doors are unlocked, we have but to push them open, and the palace is full of manacled queens.
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Why not have the courage to meet a base question with a noble answer? Do you imagine it would pass quite unnoticed or merely arouse surprise? Do you not think it would be more akin to the discourse that would naturally be held between two souls? We know not where it may give encouragement, where freedom. Even he who rejects your word will, in spite of himself, have taken a step towards the beauty that is within him.
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Let us not be afraid of sowing beauty along the road. It may remain there for weeks or years, but like the diamond it cannot dissolve, and finally there will pass by some one whom its glitter will attract; he will pick it up and go his way, rejoicing. Then why keep back a lofty, beautiful word, for that you doubt whether others will understand? An instant of higher goodness was impending over you; why hinder its coming, even though you believe not that those about you will profit thereby? What if you are among men of the valley, is that sufficient reason for checking the instinctive movement of your soul towards the mountain peaks?
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As we wander from the god within us so does ugliness enwrap us; as we discover him, so do we become more beautiful. But it is only by revealing the divine that is in us that we may discover the divine in others.
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thousands of existences there are that no spirit visits; thousands of existences wherein life has infused such timidity into the soul that it departs without saying a word, without even once having been able to deck itself with the humblest jewels of its humble crown....