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Simone Weil Quotes - Page 14

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

Beauty is a fruit which we look at without trying to seize it.

Beauty is a fruit which we look at without trying to seize it.

Beauty, Trying, Looks

Simone Weil (2002). “Gravity and Grace”, p.150, Psychology Press

A society like the Church, which claims to be Divine is perhaps more dangerous on account of the ersatz good which it contains then on account of the evil which sullies it. Something of the social labelled divine: an intoxicating mixture which carries with it every sort of license. Devil disguised.

Evil, Church, Mixtures

Simone Weil (2002). “Gravity and Grace”, p.166, Psychology Press

There is a certain kind of morality which is even more alien to good and evil than amorality is.

Evil, Morality, Aliens

"On Science, Necessity, and the Love of God". Book by Simone Weil, Translated by R. Rees, "The responsibility of writers," p. 169, 1968.

We should do only those righteous actions which we cannot stop ourselves from doing.

Action, Should, Righteous

Simone Weil (2013). “The Notebooks of Simone Weil”, p.150, Routledge

Concern for the symbol has completely disappeared from our science . And yet, if one were to give oneself the trouble, one could easily find, in certain parts at least of contemporary mathematics... symbols as clear, as beautiful, and as full of spiritual meaning as that of the circle and mediation. From modern thought to ancient wisdom the path would be short and direct, if one cared to take it.

Beautiful, Spiritual, Circles

Simone Weil (2002). “The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties Towards Mankind”, p.286, Psychology Press

science has now been for a long time - and to an ever-increasing extent - a collective enterprise. Actually, new results are always, in fact, the work of specific individuals; but, save perhaps for rare exceptions, the value of any result depends on such a complex set of interrelations with past discoveries and possible future researches that even the mind of the inventor cannot embrace the whole.

Science, Past, Discovery

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

Punishment is a vital need of the human soul.

Punishment, Soul, Needs

Simone Weil (2003). “The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties Towards Mankind”, p.19, Routledge

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

World, Chance, Mere

Simone Weil (2002). “Gravity and Grace”, p.26, Psychology Press

To set up as a standard of public morality a notion which can neither be defined nor conceived is to open the door to every kind of tyranny.

Doors, Tyrants, Morality

Simone Weil (2015). “Selected Essays, 1934-1943: Historical, Political, and Moral Writings”, p.10, Wipf and Stock Publishers

A man whose mind feels that it is captive would prefer to blind himself to the fact. But if he hates falsehood, he will not do so; and in that case he will have to suffer a lot. He will beat his head against the wall until he faints. He will come to again

Wall, Hate, Men

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

It is not enough that France should be regarded as a country which enjoys the remains of a freedom acquired long ago. If she is still to count in the world--and if she does not intend to, she may as well perish--she must be seen by her own citizens and by all men as an ever-flowing source of liberty. There must not be a single genuine lover of freedom in the whole world who can have a valid reason for hating France.

Country, Hate, Men

Simone Weil (2015). “Selected Essays, 1934-1943: Historical, Political, and Moral Writings”, p.194, Wipf and Stock Publishers

A right which goes unrecognized by anybody is not worth very much.

Rights

Simone Weil (2003). “The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties Towards Mankind”, p.2, Routledge

Evil is neither suffering nor sin; it is both at the same time, it is something common to them both. For they are linked together; sin makes us suffer and suffering makes us evil, and this indissoluble complex of suffering and sin is the evil in which we are submerged against our will, and to our horror.

Evil, Suffering, Together

Simone Weil (1998). “Simone Weil”

Someone who does not see a pane of glass is not aware of not seeing it.

Glasses, Doe, Seeing

It may be that vice, depravity, and crime are nearly always, or even perhaps always, in their essence, attempts to eat beauty, to eat what we should only look at.

Beauty, Essence, Vices

Simone Weil (2009). “Waiting on God (Routledge Revivals)”, p.61, Routledge

To get power over is to defile. To possess is to defile.

Power

Simone Weil (2015). “First and Last Notebooks: Supernatural Knowledge”, p.70, Wipf and Stock Publishers

Justice, truth, and beauty are sisters and comrades. With three such beautiful words we have no need to look for any others.

Beauty, Beautiful, Justice

Simone Weil (2014). “Letter to a Priest”, p.84, Routledge

The full expression of personality depends upon its being inflated by social prestige; it is a social privilege.

Expression, Personality, Privilege

Simone Weil (2014). “Letter to a Priest”, p.74, Routledge

Petroleum is a more likely cause of international conflict than wheat.

Peace, War, Wheat

The necessity for power is obvious, because life cannot be lived without order; but the allocation of power is arbitrary because all men are alike, or very nearly. Yet power must not seem to be arbitrarily allocated, because it will not then be recognized as power. Therefore prestige, which is illusion, is of the very essence of power.

Men, Order, Essence

Simone Weil (2015). “Selected Essays, 1934-1943: Historical, Political, and Moral Writings”, p.168, Wipf and Stock Publishers

Mathematics alone make us feel the limits of our intelligence. For we can always suppose in the case of an experiment that it is inexplicable because we don't happen to have all the data. In mathematics we have all the data, brought together in the full light of demonstration, and yet we don't understand. We always come back to the contemplation of our human wretchedness. What force is in relation to our will, the impenetrable opacity of mathematics is in relation to our intelligence.

Data, Limits, Mathematics

"The Notebooks of Simone Weil".

Time does us violence; it is the only violence.

Doe, Violence

Simone Weil (2002). “Gravity and Grace”, p.82, Psychology Press

Armies under the control of ... a sovereign State cannot bring freedom to anyone.

Army, Sovereign, States

It is impossible that the whole of truth should not be present at every time and every place, available for anyone who desires it.

Truth, Desire, Impossible

Simone Weil (1970). “First and last notebooks”

Electra weeping for the dead Orestes. If we love God while thinking that he does not exist, he will manifest his existence.

Thinking, Doe, God Love

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

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