Simone Weil - During the last quarter of a century all the authority associated with the

During the last quarter of a century all the authority associated with the function of spiritual guidance ... has seeped down into the lowest publications. ... Between a poem by Valéry and an advertisement for a beauty cream promising a rich marriage to anyone who used it there was at no point a breach of continuity. So as a result of literature's spiritual usurpation a beauty cream advertisement possessed, in the eyes of little village girls, the authority that was formerly attached to the words of priests.

- Simone Weil

source: "On Science, Necessity, and the Love of God". Book by Simone Weil. Translated by R. Rees, "Morality and literature," p. 164, 1968.

topic: Girl, Spiritual, Eye, Spiritual Guidance, Quarter Of A Century, Breach, Usurpation