Simone Weil Quotes

The 'squaring of the circle' is one of the many archetypal motifs which form the basic patterns of our dreams and fantasies. But it is distinguished by the fact that it is one of the most important of them from the functional point of view. Indeed, it could even be called the archetype of wholeness.

The Gita is like a bouquet composed of the beautiful flowers of spiritual truths collected from the Upanishads.

Meton (astronomer in 5th century BC): With the straight ruler I set to work To make the circle four-cornered .

The Ludolphian number is fixed in eternity— not a digit out of place, all characters in their proper order, an endless sentence written to the end of the world by the division of the circle’s diameter into its circumference.

As a child it was clear to me that in some sense math was in the world around us. I became fascinated by what this means. When you look at the shape of the sun and the moon, they're circles, so every time you see a circular thing, there's pi embedded in it.

God is a circle whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere.

It would be nice if you as journalists - there are some books that explain the painting [ of Guadalupe] what it is like, the significance, and that is how you can understand better this great and beautiful people.

The dot was introduced as a symbol for multiplication by Leibniz. On July 29, 1698, he wrote in a letter to Johann Bernoulli: "I do not like X as a symbol for multiplication, as it is easily confounded with x.

The task of art is to take hold of the shining, the radiance, the manifestation, of that which as spirit weaves and lives throughout the world. All genuine art seeks the spirit. Even when art wishes to represent the ugly, the disagreeable, it is concerned, not with the sensory - disagreeable as such, but with the spiritual which proclaims its nature in the midst of unpleasantness. If the spiritual shines through the ugly, even the ugly becomes beautiful. In art it is upon a relation to the spiritual that beauty depends.

If numbers aren't beautiful, I don't know what is.

If we see the body we live in as a temple used to engage in beautiful activities in the service of God's children, then we recognize it as spiritual. But if we use our body for more selfish purposes, then we're only experiencing its material conception.

The Mathematician's Shiva is a brilliant and compelling family saga full of warmth, pathos, history, and humor, not to mention a cast of delightfully quirky characters, and a math lesson or two; all together, a winning equation! When Rojstaczer writes about mathematics, you'd think he was writing about poetry.

I have my own way to walk and for some reason or other Zen is right in the middle of it wherever I go. So there it is, with all its beautiful purposelessness, and it has become very familiar to me though I do not know "what it is." Or even if it is an "it." Not to be foolish and multiply words, I'll say simply that it seems to me that Zen is the very atmosphere of the Gospels, and the Gospels are bursting with it. It is the proper climate for any monk, no matter what kind of monk he may be. If I could not breathe Zen I would probably die of spiritual asphyxiation.

Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were. The life of a person is a circle from childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything where power moves.

I know numbers are beautiful. If they aren't beautiful, nothing is.

I was lucky enough to have had great success early on in life; to have had all the things the material world can offer. And yet, I realized that what I had actually neglected was the more spiritual side of myself, which has always been there. But it's easy for us in our culture to become consumed in a sense by materialism. Now materialism is fine. We live in a material world. I'm not saying that beautiful things don't enhance our lives. But, in our culture, we're never happy.

The original languages didn't even have he and she. They didn't have concepts of masculine and feminine. People were people. And the whole idea was that we were in a circle together, not in a hierarchy together.

I know of no more beautiful prayer than that which the Hindus of old used in closing: May all that have life be delivered from suffering.

Masonry is a search after Light. That search leads us directly back, as you see, to the Kabalah.

That the system of morals propounded in the New Testament contained no maxim which had not been previously enunciated, and that some of the most beautiful passages in the apostolic writings are quotations from Pagan authors, is well known to every scholar... To assert that Christianity communicated to man moral truths previously unknown, argues on the part of the asserted either gross ignorance or wilful fraud.

All of the artists did such a beautiful job I can’t thank them enough. I’m just honored that 'God Only Knows' was chosen. 'God Only Knows' is a very special song. An extremely spiritual song and one of the best I’ve ever written.

A surprising proportion of mathematicians are accomplished musicians. Is it because music and mathematics share patterns that are beautiful?

Awareness of approach to death can be a beautiful thing, a frame into which we can put the work of art that is our life, our personal masterpiece.

We want spiritual principles to be more than beautiful abstractions; we want them to actually transform our lives.

Do mathematics have a relation to reality or are they only a mathematical symbol?