Wisdom and Destiny is a philosophical essay by Maurice Maeterlinck. Maeterlinck was a playwright, poet and essayist who focused on the grand themes of life and death. Excerpt: «After all, what is a humble life? It is thus we choose to term the life that ignores itself, that drains itself dry in the place of its birth—a life whose feelings and thoughts, whose desires and passions, entwine themselves around the most insignificant things. But it suffices to look at a life for that life to seem great. A life in itself can be neither great nor small; the largeness is all in the eye that surveys it; and an existence that all men hold to be lofty and vast, is one that has long been accustomed to look loftily on itself from within.»