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Simone Weil Quotes - Page 10

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

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

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.

Humility, Acceptance, Knowing

"Concerning the Our Father". "Waiting on God". Book by Simone Weil, Routledge & Kegan Paul edition, p. 153, 1972.

Distance is the soul of beauty.

Distance, Soul

Simone Weil (2013). “The Notebooks of Simone Weil”, p.615, Routledge

He who does not realize to what extent shifting fortune and necessity hold in subjection every human spirit, cannot regard as fellow-creatures nor love as he loves himself those whom chance separated from him by an abyss. The variety of constraints pressing upon man give rise to the illusion of several distinct species that cannot communicate. Only he who has measured the dominion of force, and knows how not to respect it, is capable of love and justice.

Life, Men, Giving

Simone Weil (2005). “War and the Iliad”, New York Review of Books

One could count on one's fingers the number of scientists throughout the world with a general idea of the history and development of their particular science: there is none who is really competent as regards sciences other than his own. As science forms an indivisible whole, one may say that there are no longer, strictly speaking, scientists, but only drudges doing scientific work.

Science, Ideas, Numbers

Simone Weil (2013). “Oppression and Liberty”, p.12, Routledge

Whenever a human being, through the commission of a crime, has become exiled from good, he needs to be reintegrated with it through suffering. The suffering should be inflicted with the aim of bringing the soul to recognize freely some day that its infliction was just.

Punishment, Soul, Suffering

Simone Weil (2015). “Selected Essays, 1934-1943: Historical, Political, and Moral Writings”, p.226, Wipf and Stock Publishers

Moreover, nothing is so rare as to see misfortune fairly portrayed; the tendency is either to treat the unfortunate person as though catastrophe were his natural vocation, or to ignore the effects of misfortune on the soul, to assume, that is, that the soul can suffer and remain unmarked by it, can fail, in fact, to be recast in misfortune's image.

Soul, Suffering, Facts

Simone Weil (2005). “War and the Iliad”, New York Review of Books

The struggle between the opponents and defenders of capitalism is a struggle between innovators who do not know what innovation to make and conservatives who do not know what to conserve.

Struggle, Innovation, Opponents

Simone Weil (2015). “Selected Essays, 1934-1943: Historical, Political, and Moral Writings”, p.166, Wipf and Stock Publishers

On reaching a certain degree of pain we lose the world.

Pain, Degrees, World

Simone Weil (2013). “The Notebooks of Simone Weil”, p.22, Routledge

Our patriotism comes straight from the Romans. This is why French children are encouraged to seek inspiration for it in Corneille. It is a pagan virtue, if these two words are compatible. The word pagan, when applied to Rome, early possesses the significance charged with horror which the early Christian controversialists gave it. The Romans really were an atheistic and idolatrous people; not idolatrous with regard to images made of stone or bronze, but idolatrous with regard to themselves. It is this idolatry of self which they have bequeathed to us in the form of patriotism.

Christian, Children, Inspiration

"Prelude to Politics (1943)". "The Simone Weil Reader". Book edited by George A. Panichas, p. 220, 1957.

I think that it is useless to fight directly against natural weaknesses. One has to force oneself to act as though one did not have them in circumstances where a duty makes it imperative; and in the ordinary course of life one has to know these weaknesses, prudently take them into account, and strive to turn them to good purpose; for they are all capable of being put to some good purpose.

Happiness, Fighting, Thinking

Simone Weil (2009). “Waiting on God (Routledge Revivals)”, p.5, Routledge

The supernatural virtue of justice consists of behaving exactly as though there were equality when one is the stronger in an unequal relationship.

Justice, Diversity, Stronger

Simone Weil (2009). “Waiting on God (Routledge Revivals)”, p.50, Routledge

A modern factory reaches perhaps almost the limit of horror. Everybody in it is constantly harassed and kept on edge by the interference of extraneous wills while the soul is left in cold desolate misery. What man needs is silence and warmth; what he is given is an icy pandemonium. Physical labor may be painful, but it is not degrading as such. It is not art; it is not science; it is something else, possessing an exactly equal value with art and science, for it provides an equal opportunity to reach the impersonal stage of attention.

Art, Men, Opportunity

Simone Weil (2015). “Selected Essays, 1934-1943: Historical, Political, and Moral Writings”, p.17, Wipf and Stock Publishers

The most important part of teaching is to teach what it is to know.

Education, Teacher, Teaching

Simone Weil (2015). “First and Last Notebooks: Supernatural Knowledge”, p.14, Wipf and Stock Publishers

If Germany, thanks to Hitler and his successors, were to enslave the European nations and destroy most of the treasures of their past, future historians would certainly pronounce that she had civilized Europe.

Past, Europe, Civilization

Simone Weil (1962). “Selected Essays: 1934-1943”, London, Oxford U.P

Charity. To love human beings in so far as they are nothing. That is to love them as God does.

Doe, Charity, Humans

Simone Weil (2015). “First and Last Notebooks: Supernatural Knowledge”, p.77, Wipf and Stock Publishers

The real stumbling-block of totalitarian regimes is not the spiritual need of men for freedom of thought; it is men's inability to stand the physical and nervous strain of a permanent state of excitement, except during a few years of their youth.

Spiritual, Block, Real

Simone Weil (2015). “Selected Essays, 1934-1943: Historical, Political, and Moral Writings”, p.189, Wipf and Stock Publishers

The authentic and pure values, truth, beauty, and goodness, in the activity of a human being are the result of one and the same act, a certain application of the full attention to the object. Teaching should have no aim but to prepare, by training the attention, for the possibility of such an act. All the other advantages of instruction are without interest.

Teaching, Should Have, Training

Simone Weil (2002). “Gravity and Grace”, p.120, Psychology Press

How many people have been thus led, through lack of self-confidence, to stifle their most justified doubts?

Self Confidence, People, Doubt

The soul is the human being considered as having a value in itself.

Soul, Humans, Human Beings

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

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.

Loyalty, Spring, Law

Simone Weil (2015). “Selected Essays, 1934-1943: Historical, Political, and Moral Writings”, p.127, Wipf and Stock Publishers

When literature becomes deliberately indifferent to the opposition of good and evil it betrays its function and forfeits all claim to excellence.

Evil, Excellence, Literature

Simone Weil (1977). “The Simone Weil Reader”

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

Science, Doe, Worthless

Simone Weil (2002). “Gravity and Grace”, p.56, Psychology Press

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.

Christian, Essence, Suffering

Simone Weil (1998). “Simone Weil”

During the last quarter of a century all the authority associated with the function of spiritual guidance ... has seeped down into the lowest publications. ... Between a poem by Valéry and an advertisement for a beauty cream promising a rich marriage to anyone who used it there was at no point a breach of continuity. So as a result of literature's spiritual usurpation a beauty cream advertisement possessed, in the eyes of little village girls, the authority that was formerly attached to the words of priests.

Girl, Spiritual, Eye

"On Science, Necessity, and the Love of God". Book by Simone Weil. Translated by R. Rees, "Morality and literature," p. 164, 1968.

There is no detachment where there is no pain. And there is no pain endured without hatred or lying unless detachment is present too.

Pain, Lying, Hatred

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