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Simone Weil Quotes - Page 4

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

The virtue of hope is an orientation of the soul towards a transformation after which it will be wholly and exclusively love.

The virtue of hope is an orientation of the soul towards a transformation after which it will be wholly and exclusively love.

Soul, Transformation, Virtue

Simone Weil (2014). “Letter to a Priest”, p.37, Routledge

Misfortunes leave wounds which bleed drop by drop even in sleep; thus little by little they train man by force and dispose him to wisdom in spite of himself. Man must learn to think ofhimself as a limited and dependent being; and only suffering teaches him this.

Failure, Sleep, Men

It is only necessary to know that love is a direction and not a state of the soul. If one is unaware of this, one falls to despair at the first onslaught of affliction.

Love, Fall, Soul

Simone Weil (2009). “Waiting on God (Routledge Revivals)”, p.46, Routledge

Humility is attentive patience.

Patience, Humble, Humility

Simone Weil (2015). “First and Last Notebooks: Supernatural Knowledge”, p.111, Wipf and Stock Publishers

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.

Spiritual, Reality, Aggravation

Simone Weil (2002). “Gravity and Grace”, p.129, Psychology Press

The afflicted are not listened to. They are like someone whose tongue has been cut out and who occasionally forgets the fact. When they move their lips no ear perceives any sound. And they themselves soon sink into impotence in the use of language, because of the certainty of not being heard.

Moving, Cutting, Suffering

Simone Weil (2015). “Selected Essays, 1934-1943: Historical, Political, and Moral Writings”, p.28, Wipf and Stock Publishers

It is not through the way in which someone speaks about God that I can see whether that person has passed through the crucible of Divine Love, but through the way the person speaks to me about things here on earth.

Crucible, Earth, Way

Purity is the ability to contemplate defilement.

Purity, Ability, Contemplating

Simone Weil (2013). “The Notebooks of Simone Weil”, p.290, Routledge

Expectant waiting is the foundation of the spiritual life.

Spiritual, Expectations, Waiting

When we hit a nail with a hammer, the whole of the shock received by the large head of the nail passes into the point without any of it being lost, although it is only a point. If the hammer and the head of the nail were infinitely big it would be just the same. The point of the nail would transmit this infinite shock at the point to which it was applied. Extreme affliction, which means physical pain, distress of soul and social degradation, all at the same time, constitutes the nail. The point is applied at the very center of the soul, whose head is all necessity, spreading throughout space and time.

Pain, Mean, Space

"Waiting on God (Routledge Revivals)".

The highest ecstasy is the attention at its fullest.

Attention, Awareness, Ecstasy

Simone Weil (2013). “The Notebooks of Simone Weil”, p.515, Routledge

When a man's life is destroyed or damaged by some wound or privation of soul or body, which is due to other men's actions or negligence, it is not only his sensibility that suffers but also his aspiration toward the good. Therefore there has been sacrilege towards that which is sacred in him.

Men, Soul, Suffering

Simone Weil (2015). “Selected Essays, 1934-1943: Historical, Political, and Moral Writings”, p.221, Wipf and Stock Publishers

Creation is an act of love and it is perpetual.

Creation, Acts Of Love, Perpetual

Simone Weil (2002). “Gravity and Grace”, p.32, Psychology Press

Human existence is so fragile a thing and exposed to such dangers that I cannot love without trembling.

Danger, Trembling, Existence

Simone Weil (2002). “Gravity and Grace”, p.13, Psychology Press

We do injury to a child if we bring it up in a narrow Christianity, which prevents it from ever becoming capable of perceiving that there are treasures of purest gold to be found in non-Christian civilizations. Laical education does an even greater injury to children. It covers up those treasures, and those of Christianity as well.

Christian, Children, Civilization

Simone Weil (2003). “The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties Towards Mankind”, p.91, Routledge

The villagers seldom leave the village; many scientists have limited and poorly cultivated minds apart from their specialty.

Science, Mind, Village

A beautiful woman looking at her image in the mirror may very well believe the image is herself. An ugly woman knows it is not.

Beautiful, Believe, Mirrors

Simone Weil (1973). “Waiting for God”

When war is waged, it is for the purpose of safeguarding or increasing one's capacity to make war. International politics are wholly involved in this vicious cycle. What is called national prestige consists in behaving always in such a way as to demoralize other nations by giving them the impression that, if it comes to war, one would certainly defeat them. What is called national security is an imaginary state of affairs in which one would retain the capacity to make war while depriving all other countries of it.

Country, War, Giving

"The Power of Words (1937)". "Selected Essays 1934-1943". Book y Simone Weil, translated by Richard Rees, p. 224, 1957.

In this world we live in a mixture of time and eternity. Hell would be pure time.

Time, Would Be, World

Simone Weil (2015). “First and Last Notebooks: Supernatural Knowledge”, p.198, Wipf and Stock Publishers

When a contradiction is impossible to resolve except by a lie, then we know that it is really a door.

Lying, Insomnia, Doors

The difference between more or less intelligent men is like the difference between criminals condemned to life imprisonment in smaller or larger cells. The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like a condemned man who is proud of his large cell.

Men, Intelligent, Differences

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

True definition of science: the study of the beauty of the world.

World, Definitions, Study

Simone Weil (2003). “The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties Towards Mankind”, p.258, Routledge

Beauty captivates the flesh in order to obtain permission to pass right through to the soul. . . . When the feeling for beauty happens to be associated with the sight of some human being, the transference of love is made possible, at any rate in an illusory manner. But it is all the beauty of the world, it is universal beauty, for which we yearn.

Beauty, Love Is, Sight

Justice consists in seeing that no harm is done to men. Whenever a man cries inwardly: 'Why am I being hurt?' harm is being done to him. He is often mistaken when he tries to define the harm, and why and by whom it is being inflicted on him. But the cry itself is infallible.

Hurt, Men, Compassion

Simone Weil (2015). “Selected Essays, 1934-1943: Historical, Political, and Moral Writings”, p.30, Wipf and Stock Publishers

An atheist may be simply one whose faith and love are concentrated on the impersonal aspects of God.

Love, Atheist, Atheism

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