The Iliad, or The Poem of Force Quotes

“Yet what is impossible in logic becomes true in life, and the contradiction lodged within the soul tears it to shreds.”
― Simone Weil, The Iliad, or The Poem of Force

“Such is the power of might. Its power to transform man into a thing is double and it cuts both ways; it petrifies differently but equally the souls of those who suffer it, and of those who wield it.”
― Simone Weil, The Iliad, or The Poem of Force

“Those who believe that God himself, once he became man, could not face the harshness of destiny without a long tremor of anguish, should have understood that the only people who can give the impression of having risen to a higher plane, who seem superior to ordinary human misery, are the people who resort to the aids of illusion, exaltation, fanaticism, to conceal the harshness of destiny from their own eyes. The man who does not wear the armor of the lie cannot experience force without being touched by it to the very soul.

Grace can prevent this touch from corrupting him, but it cannot spare him the wound. Having forgotten it too well, Christian tradition can only rarely recover that simplicity that renders so poignant every sentence in the story of the Passion.”
― Simone Weil, The Iliad, or The Poem of Force