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Simone Weil Quotes - Page 8

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

Workers need poetry more than bread. They need that their life should be a poem. They need some light from eternity. Religion alone can be the source of such poetry.

Workers need poetry more than bread. They need that their life should be a poem. They need some light from eternity. Religion alone can be the source of such poetry.

Light, Needs, Bread

Simone Weil (2002). “Gravity and Grace”, p.180, Psychology Press

The appetite for power, even for universal power, is only insane when there is no possibility of indulging it; a man who sees the possibility opening before him and does not try to grasp it, even at the risk of destroying himself and his country, is either

Country, Power, Men

What is surprising is not that oppression should make its appearance only after higher forms of economy have been reached, but that it should always accompany them.

Oppression, Appearance, Economics

Simone Weil (2013). “Oppression and Liberty”, p.59, Routledge

In a general way, the literature of the twentieth century is essentially psychological; and psychology consists of describing states of the soul by displaying them all on the same plane, without any discrimination of value, as though good and evil were external to them, as though the effort toward the good could be absent at any moment from the thought of any man.

Men, Evil, Effort

"On Science, Necessity, and the Love of God". Book by Simone Weil, Translated by R. Rees, "The responsibility of writers," p. 168, 1968.

The future is made of the same stuff as the present.

Witty, Future, Stuff

Simone Weil (2003). “The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties Towards Mankind”, p.299, Routledge

At the bottom of the heart of every human being, from earliest infancy until the tomb, there is something that goes on indomitably expecting, in the teeth of all experience of crimes committed, suffered, and witnessed, that good and not evil will be done

Heart, Evil, Teeth

Simone Weil (2014). “Letter to a Priest”, p.59, Routledge

In the Church, considered as a social organism, the mysteries inevitably degenerate into beliefs.

Church, Degenerates, Belief

Simone Weil (2013). “The Notebooks of Simone Weil”, p.284, Routledge

Of two men who have no experience of God, he who denies him is perhaps nearer to him than the other.

Men, Two, Deny

Simone Weil (2013). “The Notebooks of Simone Weil”, p.151, Routledge

The entire universe is nothing but a great metaphor.

Philosophical, Metaphor, Universe

Simone Weil (2015). “First and Last Notebooks: Supernatural Knowledge”, p.98, Wipf and Stock Publishers

Time's violence rends the soul, by the rent eternity enters.

Soul, Violence, Eternity

Simone Weil (1952). “Gravity and Grace”, p.134, U of Nebraska Press

To wish to escape from solitude is cowardice. Friendship is not to be sought, not to be dreamed, not to be desired; it is to be exercised (it is a virtue).

Solitude, Wish, Virtue

Simone Weil (2002). “Gravity and Grace”, p.67, Psychology Press

One has only the choice between God and idolatry. There is no other possibility. For the faculty of worship is in us, and it is either directed somewhere into this world, or into another.

Choices, World, Worship

Simone Weil (2015). “First and Last Notebooks: Supernatural Knowledge”, p.138, Wipf and Stock Publishers

We do not obtain the most precious gifts by going in search of them but by waiting for them.

Waiting, Precious Gifts

Simone Weil (2009). “Waiting on God (Routledge Revivals)”, p.35, Routledge

All the goods of this world...are finite and limited and radically incapable of satisfying the desire that perpetually burns within us for an infinite and perfect good.

Perfect, Desire, World

Official history is believing the murderers at their word.

Believe, Murderer, Officials

To claim that theft or adultery or lying are "evil" simply reflects our degraded idea of good-—that it has something to do with respect for property, respectability, and sincerity.

Lying, Ideas, Evil

I would suggest that barbarism be considered as a permanent and universal human characteristic which becomes more or less pronounced according to the play of circumstances.

Play, Barbarism, Characteristics

Simone Weil (2015). “Selected Essays, 1934-1943: Historical, Political, and Moral Writings”, p.143, Wipf and Stock Publishers

Bourgeois society is infected by monomania: the monomania of accounting. For it, the only thing that has value is what can be counted in francs and centimes. It never hesitates to sacrifice human life to figures which look well on paper, such as national budgets or industrial balance sheets.

Sacrifice, Balance, Looks

It is not for man to seek, or even to believe in, God. He only has to refuse his ultimate love to everything that is not God. This refusal does not presuppose any belief. It is enough to recognize what is obvious to any mind: that all the goods of this world, past, present, and future, real or imaginary, are finite and limited and radically incapable of satisfying the desire that perpetually burns within us for an infinite and perfect good.

Real, Believe, Past

The demonstrable correlation of opposites is an image of the transcendental correlation of contradictories.

Opposites, Transcendental, Contradictory

Necessity is God's veil.

Veils

Simone Weil (2002). “Gravity and Grace”, p.104, Psychology Press

If we forgive God for his crime against us, which is to have made us finite creatures, He will forgive our crime against him, which is that we are finite creatures.

God, Forgiving, Crime

In relation to God, we are like a thief who has burgled the house of a kindly householder and been allowed to keep some of the gold. From the point of view of the lawful owner this gold is a gift; Form the point of view of the burglar it is a theft. He must go and give it back. It is the same with our existence. We have stolen a little of God's being to make it ours. God has made us a gift of it. But we have stolen it. We must return it.

God, Views, Giving

Uprooting is by far the most dangerous of the ills of human society, for it perpetuates itself.

Moving, Roots, Uprooting

Religion in so far as it is a source of consolation is a hindrance to true faith ; and in this sense atheism is a purification. I have to be an atheist with that part of myself which is not made for God. Among those in whom the supernatural part of themselves has not been awakened, the atheists are right and the believers wrong.

Faith, Atheist, Atheism

Simone Weil (2013). “The Notebooks of Simone Weil”, p.238, Routledge

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