Beauty is a fruit which we look at without trying to seize it.
Interpretation
True beauty is often appreciated from a distance and is not something we can possess or control.
This quote by Simone Weil speaks to the nature of beauty as something that exists in its own realm, appreciated through observation rather than ownership. It suggests that beauty, much like fruit, is to be enjoyed in its natural form rather than exploited or attempted to be captured, highlighting the transient yet impactful experience of encountering beauty in the world around us.
In practice
In an art class, a teacher might share this quote to prompt a discussion on appreciating art without the need for ownership.
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?
I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works.
What could be more simple and more complex, more obvious and more profound than a portrait.
I'm involved in all things musical. It's all consuming, even if it doesn't necessarily manifest as a record or a concert.
[O]ne can scarcely be frightened off writing what one wants to write for fear an obscure reviewer should patronise one on that account.
I do tend to think that I've written a great deal out of my unconscious because half the time I don't know what a given character is going to say next.
My introduction to art history was like everybody else's. You see an art history book that has works by Rembrandt and Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. Yes, these things are great. But I don't see a reflection of myself in any of these things I'm looking at.
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