Quotations

"Love of God is pure when joy and suffering inspire an equal degree of gratitude."

— Simone Weil, French philosopher, born 1909

"The sea is not less beautiful in our eyes because we know that sometimes ships are wrecked by it."

— Simone Weil, French philosopher, born 1909

"There are now two sorts of countries in the world, those that want to expel the Jews and those that don't want to admit them."

— Chaim Weizmann, Belarusian-Israeli politician, died November 9, 1952

"You know what's the sexiest thing of all? A little mystery."

— Raquel Welch, American actress, born September 5, 1940

"We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone."

— Simone Weil, French philosopher, born 1909

"I don't pray because I don't want to bore God."

— Orson Welles, American actor, born 1915

"The essential is to excite the spectators. If that means playing Hamlet on a flying trapeze or in an aquarium, you do it."

— Simone Weil, French philosopher, born 1909

"Everything about me is a contradiction, and so is everything about everybody else. We are made out of oppositions; we live between two poles. There's a philistine and an aesthete in all of us, and a murderer and a saint. You don't reconcile the poles. You just recognize them."

— Simone Weil, French philosopher, born 1909

"I passionately hate the idea of being with it, I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time."

— Orson Welles, American actor, died October 10, 1985

"We all have our time machines, don't we. Those that take us back are memories. And those that carry us forward, are dreams."

— H. G. Wells, English author, died August 13, 1946

"Our true nationality is mankind."

— H. G. Wells, English author, born September 21, 1866

"For the night was not impartial. No, the night loved some more than others, served some more than others."

— Eudora Welty, American author, born April 13, 1909

"The novelist works neither to correct nor to condone, not at all to comfort, but to make what's told alive."

— Eudora Welty, American author, born April 13, 1909

"Fiction shows us the past as well as the present moment in mortal light; it is an art served by the indelibility of our memory, and one empowered by a sharp and prophetic awareness of what is ephemeral. It is by the ephemeral that our feeling is so strongly aroused for what endures, or strives to endure."

— Eudora Welty, American author, died July 23, 2001