Simone Weil - God Quotes

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God is rich in mercy. I know this wealth of his with the certainty of experience, I have touched it.

Simone Weil
Christians ought to suspect that affliction is the very essence of creation. To be a created thing is not necessarily to be afflicted, but it is necessarily to be exposed to affliction.... Affliction is the surest sign that God wishes to be loved by us; it is the most precious evidence of His tenderness.

Simone Weil
God's love for us is not the reason for which we should love him. God's love for us is the reason for us to love ourselves.

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

Simone Weil
We cannot take a single step toward heaven. It is not in our power to travel in a vertical direction. If however we look heavenward for a long time, God comes and takes us up.

Simone Weil
If people were told: what makes carnal desire imperious in you is not its pure carnal element. It is the fact that you put into it the essential part of yourself—the need for Unity, the need for God — they wouldn't believe it. To them it seems obvious that the quality of imperious need belongs to the carnal desire as such. In the same way it seems obvious to the miser that the quality of desirability belongs to gold as such, and not to its exchange value.

Simone Weil
There are two atheisms of which one is a purification of the notion of God.

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 love God while thinking that he does not exist, he will manifest his existence.

Simone Weil
It seemed to me certain, and I still think so today, that one can never wrestle enough with God if one does so out of pure regard for the truth. Christ likes us to prefer truth to him because, before being Christ, he is truth. If one turns aside from him to go toward the truth, one will not go far before falling into his arms.

Simone Weil
A science which does not bring us nearer to God is worthless.

Simone Weil
We can know only one thing about God — that he is what we are not. Our wretchedness alone is an image of this. The more we contemplate it, the more we contemplate him.

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
Because no other could do it, he himself went to the greatest possible distance, the infinite distance. This infinite distance between God and God, this supreme tearing apart, this incomparable agony, this marvel of love, is the crucifixion. Nothing can be further from God than that which has been made accursed.

Simone Weil
No human being escapes the necessity of conceiving some good outside himself towards which his thought turns in a movement of desire, supplication, and hope. consequently, the only choice is between worshipping the true God or an idol. Every atheist is an idolater — unless he is worshipping the true God in his impersonal aspect. The majority of the pious are idolaters.

Simone Weil
It is only the impossible that is possible for God. He has given over the possible to the mechanics of matter and the autonomy of his creatures.

Simone Weil
Prayer consists of attention. It is the orientation of all the attention of which the soul is capable towards God. The quality of the attention counts for much in the quality of the prayer. Warmth of heart cannot make up for it.

Simone Weil
It is not my business to think about myself. My business is to think about God. It is for God to think about me.

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
Every time that a man has, with a pure heart, called upon Osiris, Dionysus, Buddha, the Tao, etc., the Son of God has answered him by sending the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit has acted upon his soul, not by inciting him to abandon his religious tradition, but by bestowing upon him light — and in the best of cases the fullness of light — in the heart of that same religious tradition. … It is, therefore, useless to send out missions to prevail upon the peoples of Asia, Africa or Oceania to enter the Church.

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
We must love all facts, not for their consequences, but because in each fact God is there present.

Simone Weil
The essential thing to know about God is that God is the Good. All the rest is secondary.

Simone Weil
An atheist may be simply one whose faith and love are concentrated on the impersonal aspects of God.

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

Simone Weil
Two prisoners whose cells adjoin communicate with each other by knocking on the wall. The wall is the thing which separates them but is also their means of communication. It is the same with us and God. Every separation is a link.

Simone Weil
Of two men who have no experience of God, he who denies him is perhaps nearer to him than the other.

Simone Weil
School children and students who love God should never say: "For my part I like mathematics"; "I like French"; "I like Greek." They should learn to like all these subjects, because all of them develop that faculty of attention which, directed toward God, is the very substance of prayer.

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
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