Maurice Maeterlinck Quotes

No one recovers from the disease of being born, a deadly wound if there ever was one.

The meaningless absurdity of life is the only incontestable knowledge accessible to man.

Have you not done tormenting me with your accursed time! It's abominable! When! When! One day, is that not enough for you, one day he went dumb, one day I went blind, one day we'll go deaf, one day we were born, one day we shall die, the same day, the same second, is that not enough for you? They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more.

Three causes especially have excited the discontent of mankind; and, by impelling us to seek remedies for the irremediable, have bewildered us in a maze of madness and error. These are death, toil, and the ignorance of the future.

No society has been able to abolish human sadness, no political system can deliver us from the pain of living, from our fear of death, our thirst for the absolute. It is the human condition that directs the social condition, not vice versa.

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.

Life is an incurable disease.

Deep down, no one really believes they have a right to live. But this death sentence generally stays tucked away, hidden beneath the difficulty of living. If that difficulty is removed from time to time, death is suddenly there, unintelligibly.

It even feels absurd to be writing or singing a song at all - in the context of actual death, being alive feels absurd.

The lot of man is to suffer and die.What's gone is of no consequence.

We’re going to die and not even know. We’ll never know, and all this meaninglessness will just go on and on and on. And we won’t any longer be witnesses to it. We won’t have even that little bit of power to give meaning to it in our minds. We’ll just be gone, dead, dead, dead, without ever knowing!

We all die at the end, but does that nullify everything? Would most people rather say, "I wish I hadn't been born?" Once you're born you'll have to die, now is that funny or sad?

We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus!

After a few decades, everyone you know will be dead. Problem solved.

Life is absolutely unbearable. And we're going to die.

The thought that really crushes us is the thought of the futility of life of which death is the visible manifestation.

Life is a predicament which precedes death.

No, I regret nothing, all I regret is having been born, dying is such a long tiresome business I always found.

Life will end in death and unhappiness, but we do it anyway.

I'm just observing the world. I was born into it, like you were, and then I found out there were some really disturbing aspects to being alive, like the fact that you weren't going to be alive forever - that bothered me.

There are only three events in a man's life; birth, life, and death; he is not conscious of being born, he dies in pain, and he forgets to live.

Listen to the cry of a woman in labor at the hour of giving birth - look at the dying man's struggle at his last extremity, and then tell me whether something that begins and ends thus could be intended for enjoyment.

We are all racing towards death. No matter how many great, intellectual conclusions we draw during our lives, we know they're all only man-made, like God. I begin to wonder where it all leads. What can you do, except do what you can do as best you know how.

Any art worthy of its name should address 'life', 'man', 'nature', 'death' and 'tragedy'.

Death threatens our speech with futility because death is not just a biological event - it is a reality we fear may rob our living of any significance.