T.S. Eliot (1888–1965)

The Need for Roots Preface

"My aims in writing this preface are, first, to affirm my belief in the importance of the author and of this particular book; second, to warn the reader against premature judgment and summary classification—to persuade him to hold in check his own prejudices and at the same time to be patient with those of Simone Weil."
"The fragmentariness of the extracts elicits the profound insights and the startling originality, but suggests that hers was a mind of occasional flashes of inspiration."
"In trying to understand her, we must not be distracted—as is only too likely to happen on a first reading—by considering how far, and at what points, we agree or disagree. We must simply expose ourselves to the personality of a woman of genius, of a kind of genius akin to that of the saints."
"That is another way of indicating that our first experience of Simone Weil should not be expressible in terms of approval or dissent. I cannot conceive of anybody’s agreeing with all of her views, or of not disagreeing violently with some of them. But agreement and rejection are secondary: what matters is to make contact with a great soul."
"One is struck, here and there, by a contrast between an almost superhuman humility and what appears to be an almost outrageous arrogance."
"It was rather that all her thought was so intensely lived, that the abandonment of any opinion required modifications in her whole being: a process which could not take place painlessly, or in the course of a conversation. And—especially in the young, and in those like Simone Weil in whom one detects no sense of humour—egotism and selflessness can resemble each other so closely that we may mistake the one for the other."
"In the work of such a writer we must expect to encounter paradox."
"And in her political thinking she appears as a stern critic of both Right and Left; at the same time more truly a lover of order and hierarchy than most of those who call themselves Conservative, and more truly a lover of the people than most of those who call themselves Socialist."
"Her attitude may appear to be dangerously close to that of those universalists who maintain that the ultimate and esoteric truth is one."
"Her admirations, when not motivated by her dislikes, seem to be at least intensified by them."
"I have taken this course in the belief that many readers, coming for the first time upon some assertion likely to arouse intellectual incredulity or emotional antagonism, might be deterred from improving their acquaintance with a great soul and a brilliant mind. Simone Weil needs patience from her readers, as she doubtless needed patience from the friends who most admired and appreciated her. "
"I find in the present book especially a balanced judgment, a wisdom in avoiding extremes, astonishing in anyone so young."
"Simone Weil is not to be classified. The paradoxicality of her sympathies is a contributing cause of the equilibrium."
"This book belongs in that category of prolegomena to politics which politicians seldom read, and which most of them would be unlikely to understand or to know how to apply. Such books do not influence the contemporary conduct of affairs: for the men and women already engaged in this career and committed to the jargon of the market-place, they always come too late. This is one of those books which ought to be studied by the young before their leisure has been lost and their capacity for thought destroyed in the life of the hustings and the legislative assembly; books the effect of which, we can only hope, will become apparent in the attitude of mind of another generation."
"What she cared about was human souls."