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Simone Weil Quotes - Page 13

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

Every perfect life is a parable invented by God.

Every perfect life is a parable invented by God.

Life, Perfect, Parables

We are only geometricians of matter; the Greeks were, first of all, geometricians in the apprenticeship to virtue.

Greek, Matter, Firsts

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

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.

Beast, Imitation, Idolatry

Simone Weil (2002). “Gravity and Grace”, p.164, Psychology Press

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

Atheist, Two, Atheism

Simone Weil (2002). “Gravity and Grace”, p.114, Psychology Press

Modern war appears as a struggle led by all the State apparatuses and their general staffs against all men old enough to bear arms.

Peace, War, Struggle

the instruments of power - arms, gold, machines, magical or technical secrets - always exist independently of him who disposes of them, and can be taken up by others. Consequently all power is unstable.

Taken, Power, Secret

Simone Weil (2001). “Oppression and Liberty”, p.64, Psychology Press

Whatever debases the intelligence degrades the entire human being.

Intelligent, Aggravation, Intelligence

Contemplating an object fixedly with the mind, asking myself, 'What is it?' without thinking of any other object or relating it to anything else for hours on end.

Thinking, Mind, Vision

Academic work is one of those fields which contain a pearl so precious that it is worth while to sell all our possessions, keeping nothing for ourselves, in order to be able to acquire it.

Education, Order, Academic Work

Simone Weil (2009). “Waiting on God (Routledge Revivals)”, p.36, Routledge

Purity is the power to contemplate defilement.

Power, Purity, Contemplating

Simone Weil (2002). “Gravity and Grace”, p.122, Psychology Press

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.

Stars, Lying, Moon

Simone Weil (2002). “Gravity and Grace”, p.121, Psychology Press

The only hope of socialism resides in those who have already brought about in themselves, as far as is possible in the society of today, that union between manual and intellectual labor which characterizes the society we are aiming at.

Intellectual, Unions, Today

Simone Weil (2013). “Oppression and Liberty”, p.22, Routledge

Man alone can enslave man.

Men, Slavery

Simone Weil (2013). “Oppression and Liberty”, p.90, Routledge

Life does not need to mutilate itself in order to be pure.

Life, Order, Doe

Simone Weil (2015). “First and Last Notebooks: Supernatural Knowledge”, p.10, Wipf and Stock Publishers

If we are suffering illness, poverty, or misfortune, we think we shall be satisfied on the day it ceases. But there too, we know it is false; so soon as one has got used to not suffering one wants something else.

Thinking, World Suffering, Want Something

Simone Weil (1998). “Simone Weil”

We should desire neither the immortality nor the death of any human being, whoever he may be, with whom we have to do.

Desire, May, Immortality

Simone Weil (2002). “Gravity and Grace”, p.15, Psychology Press

Rome is the Great Beast of atheism and materialism, adoring nothing but itself. Israel is the Great Beast of religion. Neither one nor the other is likable. The Great Beast is always repulsive

Israel, Rome, Atheism

Simone Weil (2002). “Gravity and Grace”, p.30, Psychology Press

The whole evolution of present-day society tends to develop the various forms of bureaucratic oppression and to give them a sort of autonomy in regard to capitalism as such.

Giving, Evolution, Oppression

Simone Weil (2013). “Oppression and Liberty”, p.13, Routledge

The only great spirit of our time.

Time, Spirit, Our Time

Simone Weil (2014). “Letter to a Priest”, p.2, Routledge

Those who keep the masses of men in subjection by exercising force and cruelty deprive them at once of two vital foods, liberty and obedience; for it is no longer within the power of such masses to accord their inner consent to the authority to which they are subjected. Those who encourage a state of things in which the hope of gain is the principle motive take away from men their obedience, for consent which is its essence is not something which can be sold.

Exercise, Men, Essence

"The Needs of the Soul (1949)". "The Need for Roots". Book by Simone Weil, p. 97, 1949.

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.

Evil, Infinity, Hell

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

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.

Prayer, Children, School

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

Every time that I think of the crucifixion of Christ, I commit the sin of envy.

Thinking, Crucifixion Of Christ, Envy

Waiting on God Letter 4 (1950)

The man who has known pure joy, if only for a moment ... is the only man for whom affliction is something devastating. At the same time he is the only man who has not deserved the punishment. But, after all, for him it is no punishment; it is God holding his hand and pressing rather hard. For, if he remains constant, what he will discover buried deep under the sound of his own lamentations is the pearl of the silence of God.

Men, Hands, Silence

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

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

God, Facts, God Is There

Simone Weil (2013). “The Notebooks of Simone Weil”, p.267, Routledge

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