Simone Weil cytaty

strona 5

„Kto mieczem wojuje, ten od miecza ginie. Kto miecz odkłada – umiera na krzyżu.”

„Tylko dla tego, kto znał choćby przez chwilę czystą radość, a stąd także smak piękności świata – bo to jedno i to samo – tylko dla niego nieszczęście jest czymś rozdzierającym.”

„Jeden z najlepszych rodzajów miłości to służyć kochanej tak, aby o tym nie wiedziała.”

„Jeśli miłość nie znajduje dla siebie żadnego przedmiotu, kochająca istota musi pokochać samą swoją miłość, pojętą jako coś zewnętrznego w stosunku do niej.”

„Teraźniejszość jest czymś, co nas wiąże. Przyszłość tworzymy sobie w wyobraźni. Tylko przeszłość jest czystą rzeczywistością.”

„Miłość nadprzyrodzona tylko wtedy może być praktykowana, wcielana i zamieniana w czyny, kiedy inne władze duszy są jej służebnicami, a samo ciało, za ich pośrednictwem, jej sługą!”

„Miłość Boga jest wtedy czysta, kiedy równą wdzięczność budzi w nas i radość, i cierpienie.”

„Masochiści podniecają się pozorem okrucieństwa, bo nie wiedzą, czym jest okrucieństwo – w ten sposób miłość staje się bezosobowa.”

„Istnieje coś jak gdyby wcielenie Boga w świat, a piękno jest Jego znakiem.”

„Dobrowolne poddanie, jakie konieczność okazuje w stosunku do miłującej mądrości – to piękno.”

„Są na ziemi trzy tajemnice, trzy rzeczy niepojęte. Piękno, sprawiedliwość i prawda.”

„Sztuka transpozycji prawd jest jedną z najważniejszych i najbardziej zaniedbanych.”

„Religia jako źródło pociechy jest przeszkodą prawdziwej wiary.”

„Pokora jest pewnym stosunkiem duszy do czasu. To zgoda na czekanie.”

„Każdy we wszystkim chętnie okazuje posłuszeństwo miłości.”

„Cała geometria wywodzi się z krzyża.”

„Tylko przeszkody zaprzątają myśl i podniecają. Gdzie nie ma przeszkód, myśl nie znajduje oparcia.”

„Za każdym razem, gdy znosimy ból, możemy sobie rzetelnie powiedzieć, że to świat, porządek świata wchodzi nam w krew.”

„Potrzeba takiego życia zbiorowego, które, otaczając każdą istotę ludzką ciepłem, pozostawi wokół niej wolną przestrzeń i ciszę. Współczesne życie jest tego przeciwieństwem.”

„Konformizm jest tym, co imituje stan łaski.”

„Kultura to narzędzie w rękach profesorów, służące im do produkcji profesorów, którzy – kiedy przyjdzie ich kolej – będą produkować profesorów.”

„Nieszczęśliwi najbardziej potrzebują ludzi mogących poświęcić im swoją uwagę.”

„Szaleństwo miłości nie szuka dla siebie wyrazu.”

„Trzeba chcieć albo tego, co konkretnie istnieje, albo tego, co zupełnie nie może istnieć, a jeszcze lepiej – jednego i drugiego.”

„Miłować prawdę to znosić pustkę, a także pogodzić się ze śmiercią. Prawda jest po stronie śmierci.”

„Świadome poddanie wszystkich naturalnych władz duszy miłości nadprzyrodzonej – to wiara.”

„Trzeba tak kochać, jak świeci słońce.”

“The full expression of personality depends upon its being inflated by social prestige; it is a social privilege.”

“Those who keep the masses of men in subjection by exercising force and cruelty deprive them at once of two vital foods, liberty and obedience; for it is no longer within the power of such masses to accord their inner consent to the authority to which they are subjected. Those who encourage a state of things in which the hope of gain is the principal motive take away from men their obedience, for consent which is its essence is not something which can be sold.”

“The state of conformity is an imitation of grace.”

“It is because of my wretchedness that I am "I." It is on account of the wretchedness of the universe that, in a sense, God is "I" (that is to say a person).”

“Moreover, nothing is so rare as to see misfortune fairly portrayed; the tendency is either to treat the unfortunate person as though catastrophe were his natural vocation, or to ignore the effects of misfortune on the soul, to assume, that is, that the soul can suffer and remain unmarked by it, can fail, in fact, to be recast in misfortune's image.”

“There are necessities and impossibilities in reality which do not obtain in fiction, any more than the law of gravity to which we are subject controls what is represented in a picture. … It is the same with pure good; for a necessity as strong as gravity condemns man to evil and forbids him any good, or only within the narrowest limits and laboriously obtained and soiled and adulterated with evil. … The simplicity which makes the fictional good something insipid and unable to hold the attention becomes, in the real good, an unfathomable marvel.”

“In a general way, the literature of the twentieth century is essentially psychological; and psychology consists of describing states of the soul by displaying them all on the same plane, without any discrimination of value, as though good and evil were external to them, as though the effort toward the good could be absent at any moment from the thought of any man.”

“The Hebrews took for their idol, not something made of metal or wood, but a race, a nation, something just as earthly. Their religion is essentially inseparable from such idolatry, because of the notion of the "chosen people."”

“Although people seem to be unaware of it today, the development of the faculty of attention forms the real object and almost the sole interest of studies.”

“Rome is the Great Beast of atheism and materialism, adoring nothing but itself. Israel is the Great Beast of religion. Neither one nor the other is likable. The Great Beast is always repulsive.”

“The soul was not made to dwell in a thing; and when forced to it, there is no part of that soul but suffers violence.”

“Any madness in us gains from being expressed, because in this way one gives a human form to what separates us from humanity.”

“A society like the Church, which claims to be Divine is perhaps more dangerous on account of the ersatz good which it contains then on account of the evil which sullies it.
Something of the social labelled divine: an intoxicating mixture which carries with it every sort of license. Devil disguised.”

“When, as a result of what was called Enlightenment in the eighteenth century, the priests had in fact almost entirely lost this function of guidance. Their place was taken by writers and scientists. In both cases it is equally absurd. Mathematics, physics, and biology are as remote from spiritual guidance as the art of arranging words. When that function is usurped by literature and science it proves there is no longer any spiritual life.”

“The first thing that we know about ourselves is our imperfection.
This is what Descartes meant when he said: 'I know God before I know myself.'
The only mark of God in us is that we feel that we are not God.”

“The recognition of human wretchedness is difficult for whoever is rich and powerful because he is almost invincibly led to believe that he is something. It is equally difficult for the man in miserable circumstances because he is almost invincibly led to believe that the rich and powerful man is something.”

“If we want a love which will protect the soul from wounds we must love something other than God.”

“It is only by entering the transcendental, the supernatural, the authentically spiritual order that man rises above the social. Until then, whatever he may do, the social is transcendent in relation to him.”

“The thought of being under absolute compulsion, the plaything of another, is unendurable for a human being. Hence, if every way of escape from the constraint is taken from him, there is nothing left for him to do but to persuade himself that he does the things he is forced to do willingly, that is to say, to substitute devotion for obedience. … It is by this twist that slavery debases the soul: this devotion is in fact based on a lie, since the reasons for it cannot bear investigation. … Moreover, the master is deceived too by the fallacy of devotion.”

“Might is that which makes a thing of anybody who comes under its sway. When exercised to the full, it makes a thing of man in the most literal sense, for it makes him a corpse.”

“Respectable scientists like de Broglie himself accept wave mechanics because it confers coherence and unity upon the experimental findings of contemporary science, and in spite of the astonishing changes it implies in connection with ideas of causality, time, and space, but it is because of these changes that it wins favor with the public. The great popular success of Einstein was the same thing. The public drinks in and swallows eagerly everything that tends to dispossess the intelligence in favor of some technique; it can hardly wait to abdicate from intelligence and reason and from everything that makes man responsible for his destiny.”

“The eulogies of my intelligence are positively intended to evade the question "Is what she says true?"”

“If you say to someone who has ears to hear: "What you are doing to me is not just," you may touch and awaken at its source the spirit of attention and love. But it is not the same with words like, "I have the right…" or "you have no right to…" They evoke a latent war and awaken the spirit of contention.”

“Only he who has measured the dominion of force, and knows how not to respect it, is capable of love and justice.”

“During the last quarter of a century all the authority associated with the function of spiritual guidance … has seeped down into the lowest publications. … Between a poem by Valéry and an advertisement for a beauty cream promising a rich marriage to anyone who used it there was at no point a breach of continuity. So as a result of literature’s spiritual usurpation a beauty cream advertisement possessed, in the eyes of little village girls, the authority that was formerly attached to the words of priests.”

“He who does not realize to what extent shifting fortune and necessity hold in subjection every human spirit, cannot regard as fellow-creatures nor love as he loves himself those whom chance separated from him by an abyss. The variety of constraints pressing upon man give rise to the illusion of several distinct species that cannot communicate.”

“Paradoxical as it may seem, a Latin prose or a geometry problem, even though they are done wrong, may be of a great service one day, provided we devote the right kind of effort to them. Should the occasion arise, they can one day make us better able to give someone in affliction exactly the help required to save him, at the supreme moment of his need.”

“A Pharisee is someone who is virtuous out of obedience to the Great Beast.”

“The Great Beast is the only object of idolatry, the only ersatz of God, the only imitation of something which is infinitely far from me and which is I myself.”