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Simone Weil Quotes - Page 9

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 capacity to give one's attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing; it is almost a miracle; it is a miracle. Nearly all those who think they have the capacity do not possess it.

The capacity to give one's attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing; it is almost a miracle; it is a miracle. Nearly all those who think they have the capacity do not possess it.

Sympathy, Thinking, Compassion

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

The poison of skepticism becomes, like alcoholism, tuberculosis, and some other diseases, much more virulent in a hitherto virgin soil.

Tuberculosis, Poison, Disease

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

The children of God should not have any other country here below but the universe itself, with the totality of all the reasoning creatures it ever has contained, contains, or ever will contain. That is the native city to which we owe our love.

Love, Country, Children

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

In reality nothing is so beautiful as the good, nothing is so monotonous and boring as evil.

Beautiful, Reality, Evil

Source: www.apologetics315.com

All the Freudian system is impregnated with the prejudice which it makes it its mission to fight -- the prejudice that everything sexual is vile.

Fighting, Prejudice, Missions

Simone Weil (2002). “Gravity and Grace”, p.55, Psychology Press

The contradictions the mind comes up against, these are the only realities, the criterion of the real. There is no contradiction in what is imaginary. Contradiction is the test of necessity.

Real, Mind, Tests

War is the supreme form of prestige.

War, Prestige, Form

Simone Weil (2013). “The Notebooks of Simone Weil”, p.25, Routledge

When an apprentice gets hurt, or complains of being tired, the workmen and peasants have this fine expression: "It is the trade entering his body." Each time that we have some pain to go through, we can say to ourselves quite truly that it is the universe, the order and beauty of the world, and the obedience of God that are entering our body.

Hurt, Pain, Tired

If a young girl is being forced into a brothel she will not talk about her rights. In such a situation the word would sound ludicrously inadequate.

Girl, Rights, Sound

Simone Weil (2015). “Selected Essays, 1934-1943: Historical, Political, and Moral Writings”, p.21, Wipf and Stock Publishers

In what concerns divine things, belief is not appropriate. Only certainty will do. Anything less than certainty is unworthy of God.

Belief, Divine, Certainty

Simone Weil (2009). “Waiting on God (Routledge Revivals)”, p.80, Routledge

One can never really give a proof of the reality of anything; reality is not something open to proof, it is something established. It is established just because proof is not enough. It is this characteristic of language, at once indispensable and inadequate, which shows the reality of the external world. Most people hardly ever realize this, because it is rare that the very same man thinks and puts his thought into action.

Reality, Men, Thinking

To be a hero or a heroine, one must give an order to oneself.

Women, Hero, Order

Who were the fools who spread the story that brute force cannot kill ideas? Nothing is easier. And once they are dead they are no more than corpses.

Ideas, Fragility, Stories

"Three Letters on History: Thophile de Viau" (written 1938 - 1939)

There is nothing that comes closer to true humility than the intelligence. It is impossible to feel pride in one's intelligence at the moment when one really and truly exercises it.

Humility, Pride, Exercise

Simone Weil (2013). “The Notebooks of Simone Weil”, p.365, Routledge

The human soul has need of security and also of risk. The fear of violence or of hunger or of any other extreme evil is a sickness of the soul. The boredom produced by a complete absence of risk is also a sickness of the soul.

Evil, Boredom, Soul

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

Every atheist is an idolater- unless he is worshipping the true God in his impersonal aspect. The majority of the pious are idolaters.

Atheist, Objectivity, Majority

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

The essential characteristic of the first half of the twentieth century is the growing weakness, and almost the disappearance, of the idea of value.

Ideas, Firsts, Weakness

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

The proper method of philosophy consists in clearly conceiving the insoluble problems in all their insolubility and then in simply contemplating them, fixedly and tirelessly, year after year, without any hope, patiently waiting.

Philosophy, Science, Years

Simone Weil (2015). “First and Last Notebooks: Supernatural Knowledge”, p.335, Wipf and Stock Publishers

One should identify oneself with the universe itself. Everything that is less than the universe is subjected to suffering.

Inspirational, Courage, Suffering

Simone Weil (2013). “The Notebooks of Simone Weil”, p.19, Routledge

The feeding of those that are hungry is a form of contemplation.

Compassion, Hungry, Contemplation

Truth is one, but error is manifold.

Truth, Errors, Truth Is

Simone Weil (2003). “The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties Towards Mankind”, p.66, Routledge

What a country calls its vital... interests are not things that help its people live, but things that help it make war.

Country, Peace, War

We cannot take a single step toward heaven. It is not in our power to travel in a vertical direction. If however we look heavenward for a long time, God comes and takes us up.

God, Long, Heaven

Simone Weil (2009). “Waiting on God (Routledge Revivals)”, p.73, Routledge

[We are not] to take one step, even in the direction of what is good, beyond that to which we are irresistibly impelled by God, and this applies to action, word, and thought.

Steps, Action, Spirituality

A doctrine serves no purpose in itself, but it is indispensable to have one if only to avoid being deceived by false doctrines.

Fake People, Doctrine, Purpose

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