Gyorgy Doczi, from The Power of Limits

Tarkovsky on the set of The Sacrifice

“Something infinitely small, under certain conditions operates in a decisive manner. There is no mass so heavy but that a given point is equal to it; for a mass will not fall if a single point in it is upheld, provided that this point be the centre of gravity.”

Simone Weil wrote this during the days of Nazi occupation in France – “brute force is not sovereign in this world... What is sovereign... is limit... Every visible and palpable force is subject to an invisible limit, which it shall never cross. In the sea a wave mounts higher and higher, but at a certain point... it is arrested and forced to descend... That is the truth which bites at our hearts every time we are penetrated by the beauty of this world. That is the truth which bursts forth in matchless accents of joy in the beautiful and pure parts of the Old Testament, in Greece among the Pythagoreans and all the sages, in China with Lao Tzu, in the Hindu scriptures, in Egyptian remains.”

Gyorgy Doczi, from The Power of Limits: Proportional Harmonies in Nature, Art & Architecture