Simone Weil Quotes

346 Sourced Quotes

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
The same suffering is much harder to bear for a high motive than for a base one. The people [during World War II] who stood motionless, from one to eight in the morning, for the sake of having an egg, would have found it very difficult to do in order to save a human life.

Simone Weil
Algebra and money are essentially levelers; the first intellectually, the second effectively.

Simone Weil
Evil is license, and that is why it is monotonous: everything has to be drawn from ourselves. One is condemned to false infinity. That is hell itself.

Simone Weil
Every new development for the last three centuries has brought men closer to a state of affairs in which absolutely nothing would be recognized in the whole world as possessing a claim to obedience except the authority of the State. The majority of people in Europe obey nothing else.

Simone Weil
Algebra is the intellectual instrument which has been created for rendering clear the quantitative aspects of the world.

Simone Weil
The Great Beast is the only object of idolatry, the only ersatz of God, the only imitation of something which is infinitely far from me and which is I myself.

Simone Weil
The vulnerability of precious things is beautiful because vulnerability is a mark of existence. The destruction of Troy. The fall of the petals from fruit trees in blossom. To know that what is most precious is not rooted in existence - that is beautiful.

Simone Weil
Education-whether its object be children or adults, individuals or an entire people-consists in creating motives.

Simone Weil
All those who possess in its pure state the love of their neighbour and the acceptance of the order of the world, inclucing affliction-all those, even should they live and die to all appearances atheists, are surely saved.

Simone Weil