Simone Weil Quotes

346 Sourced Quotes

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
Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.

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

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

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
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
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
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
The highest ecstasy is the attention at its fullest.

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

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

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

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
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
The true relation between theory and application only appears when theoretical research has been purged of all empiricism.

Simone Weil
We must wish either for that which actually exists or for that which cannot in any way exist — or, still better, for both. That which is and that which cannot be are both outside the realm of becoming.

Simone Weil
Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes this void.

Simone Weil
The miser deprives himself of his treasure because of his desire for it.

Simone Weil
The joy of learning is as indispensable in study as breathing is in running.

Simone Weil
If we want a love which will protect the soul from wounds we must love something other than God.

Simone Weil
The state of conformity is an imitation of grace. By a strange mystery — which is connected with the power of the social element — a profession can confer on quite ordinary men in their exercise of it, virtues which, if they were extended to all circumstances of life, would make of them heroes or saints.
But the power of the social element makes these virtues natural. Accordingly they need a compensation.

Simone Weil
Purity is the power to contemplate defilement.

Simone Weil
In the intellectual order, the virtue of humility is nothing more nor less than the power of attention.

Simone Weil
The villagers seldom leave the village; many scientists have limited and poorly cultivated minds apart from their specialty.

Simone Weil
The whole evolution of present-day society tends to develop the various forms of bureaucratic oppression and to give them a sort of autonomy in regard to capitalism as such.

Simone Weil
If anyone possesses this faculty, then his attention is in reality directed beyond the world, whether he is aware of it or not.
The link which attaches the human being to the reality outside the world is, like the reality itself, beyond the reach of human faculties. The respect that it makes us feel as soon as it is recognized cannot be shown to us by evidence or testimony.

Simone Weil
In every sphere, we seem to have lost the very elements of intelligence: the ideas of limit, measure, degree, proportion, relation, comparison, contingency, interdependence, interrelation of means and ends.

Simone Weil
The afflicted are not listened to. They are like someone whose tongue has been cut out and who occasionally forgets the fact. When they move their lips no ear perceives any sound. And they themselves soon sink into impotence in the use of language, because of the certainty of not being heard.

Simone Weil