There can be a true grandeur in any degree of submissiveness, because it springs from loyalty to the laws and to an oath, and not from baseness of soul.

Strength in Choosing Your Chains

Most of us hear "submissiveness" and recoil. We imagine weakness, a person rolled over by circumstance or bullied into obedience. But Weil is pointing at something stranger: the possibility that choosing to follow something larger than yourself—a principle, a promise, a set of rules you believe in—can actually be a form of strength. It's not the same as being dominated. It's the difference between a soldier abandoning a post out of fear and one staying because they pledged to protect it.

This distinction matters more than ever in a culture that often treats any form of commitment or constraint as suspicious. We're encouraged to optimize everything, break any rule that feels limiting, follow only our instincts. But watch someone stick with a difficult marriage not out of resignation but conviction, or hold themselves to a standard nobody's checking—there's something quietly powerful there. It's not about blind obedience. It's about recognizing that sometimes the bravest thing isn't breaking free from structure; it's freely choosing to be bound by something you genuinely believe in. That requires more character than impulse ever will.