Simone Weil - Gravity and Grace

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

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

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 kind of reward constitutes a degradation of energy.

Simone Weil
The thought of being under absolute compulsion, the plaything of another, is unendurable for a human being. Hence, if every way of escape from the constraint is taken from him, there is nothing left for him to do but to persuade himself that he does the things he is forced to do willingly, that is to say, to substitute devotion for obedience. … It is by this twist that slavery debases the soul: this devotion is in fact based on a lie, since the reasons for it cannot bear investigation. … Moreover, the master is deceived too by the fallacy of devotion.

Simone Weil
What hope is there for innocence if it is not recognized?

Simone Weil
A well ordered society would be one where the State only had a negative action, comparable to that of a rudder: a light pressure at the right moment to counteract the first suggestion of any loss of equilibrium.

Simone Weil
Only an indirect method is effective. We do nothing if we have not first drawn back.

Simone Weil
We possess nothing in the world — a mere chance can strip us of everything — except the power to say 'I'.

Simone Weil
In solitude we are in the presence of mere matter (even the sky, the stars, the moon, trees in blossom), things of less value (perhaps) than a human spirit. Its value lies in the greater possibility of attention.

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

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
If we go down into ourselves we find that we possess exactly what we desire.

Simone Weil
The mysteries of faith are degraded if they are made into an object of affirmation and negation, when in reality they should be an object of contemplation.

Simone Weil
Capitalism has brought about the emancipation of collective humanity with respect to nature. But this collective humanity has itself taken on with respect to the individual the oppressive function formerly exercised by nature.

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