Simone Weil Quotes

346 Sourced Quotes

Science today will either have to seek a source of inspiration higher than itself or perish.

Simone Weil
One might lay down as a postulate: All conceptions of God which are incompatible with a movement of pure charity are false. All other conceptions of him, in varying degree, are true.

Simone Weil
The children of God should not have any other country here below but the universe itself, with the totality of all the reasoning creatures it ever has contained, contains, or ever will contain. That is the native city to which we owe our love.

Simone Weil
Money, mechanization, algebra. The three monsters of contemporary civilization.

Simone Weil
Two forces rule the universe: light and gravity.

Simone Weil
The soul is the human being considered as having a value in itself.

Simone Weil
Science only offers three kinds of interest: 1. Technical applications. 2. A game of chess. 3. A road to God. (Attractions are added to the game of chess in the shape of competitions, prizes, and medals.)

Simone Weil
It is much easier to imagine ourselves in the place of God the Creator than in the place of Christ crucified.

Simone Weil
It is not enough that France should be regarded as a country which enjoys the remains of a freedom acquired long ago. If she is still to count in the world--and if she does not intend to, she may as well perish--she must be seen by her own citizens and by all men as an ever-flowing source of liberty. There must not be a single genuine lover of freedom in the whole world who can have a valid reason for hating France.

Simone Weil
When an apprentice gets hurt, or complains of being tired, the workmen and peasants have this fine expression: "It is the trade entering his body." Each time that we have some pain to go through, we can say to ourselves quite truly that it is the universe, the order and beauty of the world, and the obedience of God that are entering our body.

Simone Weil
If we concentrate our attention on trying to solve a problem of geometry, and if at the end of an hour we are no nearer to doing so than at the beginning, we have nevertheless been making progress each minute of that hour in another more mysterious dimension. Without knowing or feeling it, this apparent barren affort has brought more light into the soul.

Simone Weil
Just as a person who is always asserting that he is too good-natured is the very one from whom to expect, on some occasion, the coldest and most unconcerned cruelty, so when any group sees itself as the bearer of civilization this very belief will betray it into behaving barbarously at the first opportunity.

Simone Weil
Everybody knows that really intimate conversation is only possible between two or three. As soon as there are six or seven, collective language begins to dominate. That is why it is a complete misinterpretation to apply to the Church the words 'Wheresoever two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.' Christ did not say two hundred, or fifty, or ten. He said two or three.

Simone Weil
A man whose mind feels that it is captive would prefer to blind himself to the fact. But if he hates falsehood, he will not do so; and in that case he will have to suffer a lot. He will beat his head against the wall until he faints. He will come to again

Simone Weil
The stars, those marvelous, brilliant, inaccessible objects, at least as remote as the horizon, which we can neither change nor touch, and which in their turn, touch only our eyes, are what is furthest away from us and closest to us.

Simone Weil
There are only two sorts of greatness: true greatness, which is of a spiritual order, and the old, old lie of world conquest. Conquest is an ersatz greatness.

Simone Weil
Truth is a radiant manifestation of reality.

Simone Weil
Beauty captivates the flesh in order to obtain permission to pass right through to the soul.... When the feeling for beauty happens to be associated with the sight of some human being, the transference of love is made possible, at any rate in an illusory manner. But it is all the beauty of the world, it is universal beauty, for which we yearn.

Simone Weil
We are like plants that have the one choice of being in or out of the light.

Simone Weil
Science is today regarded by some as a mere catalogue of technical recipes, and others as a body of pure intellectual speculations which are sufficient unto themselves; the former set too little value on the intellect, the latter on the world.

Simone Weil
Justice, truth, and beauty are sisters and comrades. With three such beautiful words we have no need to look for any others.

Simone Weil
Time is an image of eternity, but it is also a substitute for eternity.

Simone Weil
Christ himself came down and took possession of me... I had never foreseen the possibility of that, of a real contact, person to person, here below, between a human being and God... in this sudden possession of me by Christ, neither my sense nor my imagination had any part: I only felt in the midst of my suffering the presence of a love.

Simone Weil
Nothing is worse than extreme affliction which destroys the "I" from the outside, because after that we can no longer destroy it ourselves.

Simone Weil
All the tragedies which we can imagine return in the end to the one and only tragedy: the passage of time.

Simone Weil
When a man's life is destroyed or damaged by some wound or privation of soul or body, which is due to other men's actions or negligence, it is not only his sensibility that suffers but also his aspiration toward the good. Therefore there has been sacrilege towards that which is sacred in him.

Simone Weil
The proper method of philosophy consists in clearly conceiving the insoluble problems in all their insolubility and then in simply contemplating them, fixedly and tirelessly, year after year, without any hope, patiently waiting.

Simone Weil
Everything without exception which is of value in me comes from somewhere other than myself, not as a gift but as a loan which must be ceaselessly renewed.

Simone Weil
As for the spirit of poverty, I do not remember any moment when it was not in me, although only to that unhappily small extent compatible with my imperfection. I fell in love with Saint Francis of Assisi as soon as I came to know about him. I always believed and hoped that one day Fate would force upon me the condition of a vagabond and a beggar which he embraced freely. Actually I felt the same way about prison.

Simone Weil
Sin is nothing else but the failure to recognize human wretchedness.

Simone Weil