Simone Weil Quotes

346 Sourced Quotes

A hurtful act is the transference to others of the degradation which we bear in ourselves.

Simone Weil
To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.

Simone Weil
Imagination and fiction make up more than three-quarters of our real life.

Simone Weil
Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be attained only by someone who is detached.

Simone Weil
If Germany, thanks to Hitler and his successors, were to enslave the European nations and destroy most of the treasures of their past, future historians would certainly pronounce that she had civilized Europe.

Simone Weil
A self-respecting nation is ready for anything, including war, except for a renunciation of its option to make war.

Simone Weil
Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it is the person crushed who feels what is happening. Unless one has placed oneself on the side of the oppressed, to feel with them, one cannot understand.

Simone Weil
One cannot imagine St Francis of Assisi talking about rights.

Simone Weil
It is precisely those artists and writers who are most inclined to think of their art as the manifestation of their personality who are in fact the most in bondage to public taste.

Simone Weil
Humility consists of knowing that in this world the whole soul, not only what we term the ego in its totality, but also the supernatural part of the soul, which is God present in it, is subject to time and to the vicissitudes of change. There must be absolutely acceptance of the possibility that everything material in us should be destroyed. But we must simultaneously accept and repudiate the possibility that the supernatural part of the soul should disappear.

Simone Weil
Rome is the Great Beast of atheism and materialism, adoring nothing but itself. Israel is the Great Beast of religion. Neither one nor the other is likable. The Great Beast is always repulsive.

Simone Weil
Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil but as a necessity, or even a duty.

Simone Weil
Workers need poetry more than bread. They need that their life should be a poem. They need some light from eternity. Religion alone can be the source of such poetry.

Simone Weil
It would seem that man was born a slave, and that slavery is his natural condition. At the same time nothing on earth can stop man from feeling himself born for liberty. Never, whatever may happen, can he accept servitude; for he is a thinking creature.

Simone Weil
Action is the pointer which shows the balance. We must not touch the pointer but the weight.

Simone Weil
The simultaneous existence of opposite virtues in the soul—like pincers to catch hold of God.

Simone Weil
The highest ecstasy is the attention at its fullest.

Simone Weil
Humanity cannot progress by importing into theoretical study the processes of blind routine and haphazard experiment by which production has so long been dominated.

Simone Weil
One of the most exquisite pleasures of human love — to serve the loved one without his knowing it — is only possible, as regards the love of God, through atheism.

Simone Weil
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.

Simone Weil
Anyone whose attention and love are really directed towards the reality outside the world recognizes at the same time that he is bound, both in public and private life, by the single and permanent obligation to remedy, according to his responsibilities and to the extent of his power, all the privations of soul and body which are liable to destroy or damage the earthly life of any human being whatsoever.

Simone Weil
Whenever one tries to suppress doubt, there is tyranny.

Simone Weil
One is never got out of the cave, one comes out of it.

Simone Weil
Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.

Simone Weil
We should have with each person the relationship of one conception of the universe to another conception of the universe, and not to a part of the universe.

Simone Weil
Every time that I think of the crucifixion of Christ, I commit the sin of envy.

Simone Weil
Our patriotism comes straight from the Romans. This is why French children are encouraged to seek inspiration for it in Corneille. It is a pagan virtue, if these two words are compatible. The word pagan, when applied to Rome, early possesses the significance charged with horror which the early Christian controversialists gave it. The Romans really were an atheistic and idolatrous people; not idolatrous with regard to images made of stone or bronze, but idolatrous with regard to themselves. It is this idolatry of self which they have bequeathed to us in the form of patriotism.

Simone Weil
Do not allow yourself to be imprisoned by any affection. Keep your solitude. The day, if it ever comes, when you are given true affection there will be no opposition between interior solitude and friendship, quite the reverse. It is even by this infallible sign that you will recognize it.

Simone Weil
When once a certain class of people has been placed by the temporal and spiritual authorities outside the ranks of those whose life has value, then nothing comes more naturally to men than murder.

Simone Weil
Everything which originates from pure love is lit with the radiance of beauty.

Simone Weil