Simone Weil cytaty

strona 6

„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.”

“There is a certain kind of morality which is even more alien to good and evil than amorality is.”

“Liberty, taking the word in its concrete sense, consists in the ability to choose.”

“Stars and blossoming fruit-trees: utter permanence and extreme fragility give an equal sense of eternity.”

“One of the most exquisite pleasures of human love — to serve the loved one without his knowing it — is only possible, as regards the love of God, through atheism.”

“By committing a crime, a man places himself, of his own accord, outside the chain of eternal obligations which bind every human being to every other one. Punishment alone can weld him back again; fully so, if accompanied by consent on his part; otherwise only partially so. Just as the only way of showing respect for somebody suffering from hunger is to give him something to eat, so the only way of showing respect for somebody who has placed himself outside the law is to reinstate him inside the law by subjecting him to the punishment ordained by law.
The need for punishment is not satisfied where, as is generally the case, the penal code is merely a method of exercising pressure through fear.”

“We should have with each person the relationship of one conception of the universe to another conception of the universe, and not to a part of the universe.”

“We can know only one thing about God — that he is what we are not. Our wretchedness alone is an image of this. The more we contemplate it, the more we contemplate him.”

“There is nothing that comes closer to true humility than the intelligence. It is impossible to feel pride in one's intelligence at the moment when one really and truly exercises it.”

“If a young girl is being forced into a brothel she will not talk about her rights. In such a situation the word would sound ludicrously inadequate.”

“The materialists say, it is by means of a series of straight lines more or less perfect that one imagines the perfect straight line as an ideal limit. That is right, but the progression in itself necessarily contains what is infinite; it is in relation to the perfect straight line that one can say that such and such a straight line is less twisted than some other. … Either one conceives the infinite or one does not conceive at all.”

“We have seen that language is something precious because it allows us to express ourselves; but it is fatal when one allows oneself to be completely led astray by it, because then it prevents one from expressing oneself. Language is the source of the prejudices and haste which Descartes thought of as the sources of error.”

“Just as a vagrant accused of stealing a carrot from a field stands before a comfortably seated judge who keeps up an elegant flow of queries, comments and witticisms while the accused is unable to stammer a word, so truth stands before an intelligence which is concerned with the elegant manipulation of opinions.”

“Meditation on the chance which led to the meeting of my mother and father is even more salutary than meditation on death.”

“I also am other than what I imagine myself to be. To know this is forgiveness.”

“It is not religion but revolution which is the opium of the people.”

“Capitalism has brought about the emancipation of collective humanity with respect to nature. But this collective humanity has itself taken on with respect to the individual the oppressive function formerly exercised by nature.”

“We believe we are rising because while keeping the same base inclinations (for instance: the desire to triumph over others) we have given them a noble object. We should, on the contrary, rise by attaching noble inclinations to lowly objects.”

“School children and students who love God should never say: "For my part I like mathematics"; "I like French"; "I like Greek." They should learn to like all these subjects, because all of them develop that faculty of attention which, directed toward God, is the very substance of prayer.”

“We must leave on one side the beliefs which fill up voids and sweeten what is bitter. The belief in immortality. The belief in the utility of sin: etiam peccata. The belief in the providential ordering of events — in short the "consolations" which are ordinarily sought in religion.”

“We should desire neither the immortality nor the death of any human being, whoever he may be, with whom we have to do.”

“If people were told: what makes carnal desire imperious in you is not its pure carnal element. It is the fact that you put into it the essential part of yourself—the need for Unity, the need for God — they wouldn’t believe it. To them it seems obvious that the quality of imperious need belongs to the carnal desire as such. In the same way it seems obvious to the miser that the quality of desirability belongs to gold as such, and not to its exchange value.”

“Attention consists of suspending our thought, leaving it detached, empty, and ready to be penetrated by the object; it means holding in our minds, within reach of this thought, but on a lower level and not in contact with it, the diverse knowledge we have acquired which we are forced to make use of.”

“The necessity for power is obvious, because life cannot be lived without order; but the allocation of power is arbitrary because all men are alike, or very nearly. Yet power must not seem to be arbitrarily allocated, because it will not then be recognized as power. Therefore prestige, which is illusion, is of the very essence of power.”

“Truth is sought not because it is truth but because it is good.”

“To desire friendship is a great fault. Friendship should be a gratuitous joy like those afforded by art or life. We must refuse it so that we may be worthy to receive it; it is of the order of grace.”

“To listen to someone is to put oneself in his place while he is speaking. To put oneself in the place of someone whose soul is corroded by affliction, or in near danger of it, is to annihilate oneself. It is more difficult than suicide would be for a happy child. Therefore the afflicted are not listened to. They are like someone whose tongue has been cut out and who occasionally forgets the fact. When they move their lips no ear perceives any sound. And they themselves soon sink into impotence in the use of language, because of the certainty of not being heard.
That is why there is no hope for the vagrant as he stands before the magistrate. Even if, through his stammerings, he should utter a cry to pierce the soul, neither the magistrate nor the public will hear it. His cry is mute. And the afflicted are nearly always equally deaf to one another; and each of them, constrained by the general indifference, strives by means of self-delusion or forgetfulness to become deaf to his own self.”

“The struggle between the opponents and defenders of capitalism is a struggle between innovators who do not know what innovation to make and conservatives who do not know what to conserve.”

“The aim is to replace economic oligarchies by the State, which has a will-to-power of its own and is quite as little concerned with the public good; and a will-to-power, moreover, which is not economic but military and therefore much more dangerous to any good folk who have a taste for staying alive. And on the bourgeois side what on earth is the sense of objecting to State control in economic affairs if one accepts private monopolies which have all the economic and technical disadvantages of State monopolies and possibly some others as well?”

“Culture is an instrument wielded by professors to manufacture professors, who, when their turn comes, will manufacture professors.”