To write the lives of the great in separating them from their works necessarily ends by above all stressing their pettiness, because it is in their work that they have put the best of themselves.
Interpretation
The essence of a person's greatness is revealed in their work, not their personal life.
Simone Weil suggests that when we try to distinguish the achievements of great individuals from their personal lives, we often end up diminishing their significance. The true measure of their greatness lies not in their personal flaws or pettiness, but in the meaningful contributions they make through their work, which reflect the best aspects of who they are.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of pursuing meaningful work, one might quote Simone Weil to emphasize the value of contributions over personal flaws.
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.
The appetite for power, even for universal power, is only insane when there is no possibility of indulging it; a man who sees the possibility opening before him and does not try to grasp it, even at the risk of destroying himself and his country, is either
As soon as men know that they can kill without fear of punishment or blame, they kill; or at least they encourage killers with approving smiles.
Evil is license, and that is why it is monotonous: everything has to be drawn from ourselves. One is condemned to false infinity. That is hell itself.
I am not a Catholic; but I consider the Christian idea, which has its roots in Greek thought and in the course of the centuries has nourished all of our European civilization, as something that one cannot renounce without becoming degraded.
How many people have been thus led, through lack of self-confidence, to stifle their most justified doubts?
A man may build himself a throne of bayonets, but he cannot sit on it.
There are many doors to goodness. (Saying) 'glory to God,' 'praise be to God,' 'there is no deity but God,' enjoining good, forbidding evil, removing harm from the road, listening to the deaf (until you understand them), leading the blind, guiding one to the object of his need, hurrying with the strength of one's legs to one in sorrow who is asking for help, and supporting the weak with the strength of one's arms - all of these are (forms of) charity prescribed for you.
Let us respect others no one lives alone in a city, a nation, or a world.
You never know yourself till you know more than your body.
Introspection is always retrospection
The ecstasy is so short but the forgetting is so long.
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