Simone Weil Quotes About Literature

Quotes about: Literature

• When science, art, literature, and philosophy are simply the manifestation of personality, they are on a level where glorious and dazzling achievements are possible, which can make a man's name live for thousands of years. But above this level, far above, separated by an abyss, is the level where the highest things are achieved. These things are essentially anonymous.

  Simone Weil

  Art, Philosophy, Science

  Simone Weil (2015). “Selected Essays, 1934-1943: Historical, Political, and Moral Writings”, p.13, Wipf and Stock Publishers

• 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.

  Simone Weil

  Men, Evil, Effort

  "On Science, Necessity, and the Love of God". Book by Simone Weil, Translated by R. Rees, "The responsibility of writers," p. 168, 1968.

• 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.

  Simone Weil

  Girl, Spiritual, Eye

  "On Science, Necessity, and the Love of God". Book by Simone Weil. Translated by R. Rees, "Morality and literature," p. 164, 1968.

• When literature becomes deliberately indifferent to the opposition of good and evil it betrays its function and forfeits all claim to excellence.

  Simone Weil

  Evil, Excellence, Literature

  Simone Weil (1977). “The Simone Weil Reader”

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