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Simone Weil Quotes

All Quotes Acceptance Art Atheism Atheist Beauty Belief Bureaucracy Certainty Children Christ Church Compassion Contemplation Country Creation Crime Desire Doubt Duty Education Effort Eternity Evil Fighting Friendship Giving God Grace Greatness Greek Happiness Heart Heaven Hell Humanity Humility Hurt Idolatry Imagination Imitation Inspirational Intelligence Joy Justice Language Learning Life Literature Love Lying Mathematics Morality Obedience Oppression Pain Past Peace Personality Power Prayer Prestige Purity Purpose Reality Science Silence Sin Solitude Soul Spirituality Struggle Study Suffering Teaching Time Today Truth Tyranny Universe Values Violence Virtue Waiting War
Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.

Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.

Simone Weil
Kindness, Caring, Generosity
Letter to Joë Bousquet on April 13, 1942. "Correspondance", published by Editions l'Age d'Homme in Lausanne, p. 18, 1982.

Pain and suffering are a kind of currency passed from hand to hand until they reach someone who receives them but does not pass them on.

Simone Weil
Pain, Hands, Suffering

We must not wish for the disappearance of our troubles but for the grace to transform them.

Simone Weil
Christian, Religious, Adversity

Just as the power of the sun is the only force in the natural universe that causes a plant to grow against gravity, so the grace of God is the only force in the spiritual universe that causes a person to grow against the gravity of their own ego.

Simone Weil
Spiritual, Humility, Acceptance

There are only two things that pierce the human heart. One is beauty. The other is affliction.

Simone Weil
Beauty, Heart, Two

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
Crush, Sides, Oppression
Simone Weil (1978). “Lectures on Philosophy”, p.139, Cambridge University Press

The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say, "What are you going through?

Simone Weil
Love, Inspirational, Friendship
Simone Weil (1973). “Waiting for God”

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

Simone Weil
Soul, Important, Needs
Simone Weil (2003). “The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties Towards Mankind”, p.43, Routledge

Whenever one tries to suppress doubt , there is tyranny .

Simone Weil
Doubt, Trying, Tyranny
Simone Weil (1978). “Lectures on Philosophy”, p.103, Cambridge University Press

The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like the condemned man who is proud of his large cell.

Simone Weil
Pride, Intelligent, Men
Simone Weil (2015). “Selected Essays, 1934-1943: Historical, Political, and Moral Writings”, p.26, Wipf and Stock Publishers

Love: To feel with one's whole self the existence of another being.

Simone Weil
Love You, Self, Existence
Simone Weil (2015). “First and Last Notebooks: Supernatural Knowledge”, p.9, Wipf and Stock Publishers

Whether the mask is labeled fascism, democracy, or dictatorship of the proletariat, our great adversary remains the apparatus—the bureaucracy, the police, the military. Not the one facing us across the frontier of the battle lines, which is not so much our enemy as our brothers' enemy, but the one that calls itself our protector and makes us its slaves. No matter what the circumstances, the worst betrayal will always be to subordinate ourselves to this apparatus and to trample underfoot, in its service, all human values in ourselves and in others.

Simone Weil
Brother, Betrayal, Military

Compassion directed toward oneself is true humility.

Simone Weil
Humility, Compassion, Oneself

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
Reason, Should, God's Love
Simone Weil (2002). “Gravity and Grace”, p.62, Psychology Press

The need of truth is more sacred than any other need.

Simone Weil
Needs, Sacred, Truth Is
"The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties Towards Mankind".

Power ... is the supreme end for all those who have not understood.

Simone Weil
Power, Ends, Understood
Simone Weil (2002). “Gravity and Grace”, p.146, Psychology Press

Never react to an evil in such a way as to augment it.

Simone Weil
Evil, Way
Simone Weil (2015). “First and Last Notebooks: Supernatural Knowledge”, p.5, Wipf and Stock Publishers

At the centre of the human heart is the longing for an absolute good, a longing which is always there and is never appeased by any object in this world.

Simone Weil
Heart, World, Longing
Simone Weil, Janet Patricia Little (2003). “Simone Weil on Colonialism: An Ethic of the Other”, p.21, Rowman & Littlefield

If you want to know what a man is really like, take notice of how he acts when he loses money.

Simone Weil
Money, Men, Want

It is only from the light which streams constantly from heaven that a tree can derive the energy to strike its roots deep into the soil. The tree is in fact rooted in the sky.

Simone Weil
Nature, Light, Sky

It is a fault to wish to be understood before we have made ourselves clear to ourselves.

Simone Weil
Wish, Faults, Made
Simone Weil (2002). “Gravity and Grace”, p.66, Psychology Press

The needs of a human being are sacred. Their satisfaction cannot be subordinated either to reasons of state, or to any consideration of money, nationality, race, or color, or to the moral or other value attributed to the human being in question, or to any consideration whatsoever.

Simone Weil
Race, Color, Needs
"Draft for a Statement of Human Obligation" (1943)

All sins are attempts to fill voids.

Simone Weil
Inspirational, Memorable, Void
La Pesanteur et la Grace "Desirer sans Objet" (1948)

Every sin is an attempt to fly from emptiness.

Simone Weil
Emptiness, Sin
Simone Weil (2002). “Gravity and Grace”, p.22, Psychology Press

What a country calls its vital economic interests are not the things which enable its citizens to live, but the things which enable it to make war. Petrol is more likely than wheat to be a cause of international conflict.

Simone Weil
Country, Peace, War
"The Power of Words" (1937)

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