Simone Weil Quotes

Education -- whether its object be children or adults, individuals or an entire people, or even ones...

A beautiful woman looking at her image in the mirror may very well believe the image is herself. An ...

God created through love and for love. God did not create anything except love itself, and the means...

We are drawn towards a thing, either because there is some good we are seeking from it, or because w...

God can never be perfectly present to us here below on account of our flesh. But he can be almost pe...

A hateful act is the transference to others of the degradation we bear in ourselves.

When I think of the Crucifixion, I commit the sin of envy.

It is because the will has no power to bring about salvation that the idea of secular morality is an...

The notion of obligations comes before that of rights, which is subordinate and relative to the form...

There isn't a man on earth who doesn't at times pronounce an opinion on good and evil, even if it be...

Love of God is pure when joy and suffering inspire an equal degree of gratitude.

Why is the determination to fight against a prejudice a sure sign that one is full of it? Such a det...

Belief in immortality is harmful because it is not in our power to conceive of the soul as really in...

To love purely is to consent to distance, it is to adore the distance between ourselves and that whi...

He who has not God in himself cannot feel His absence.

Friendship is not to be sought, not to be dreamed, not to be desired; it is to be exercised (it is a...

All the natural movements of the soul are controlled by laws analogous to those of physical gravity....

It is impossible to forgive whoever has done us harm if that harm has lowered us. We have to think t...

If we know in what way society is unbalanced, we must do what we can to add weight to the lighter sc...

Fashion exerts more power in science than it does on the shape of hats.

As soon as men know that they can kill without fear of punishment or blame, they kill; or at least t...

Every perfect life is a parable invented by God.

Love is not consolation. It is light.

It is only the impossible that is possible for God. He has given over the possible to the mechanics ...

The most important part of teaching is to teach what it is to know.

With no matter what human being, taken individually, I always find reasons for concluding that sorro...

Whatever debases the intelligence degrades the entire human being.

All sins are attempts to fill voids.

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

Humility is attentive patience.

We have to endure the discordance between imagination and fact. It is better to say, “I am suffering...

There is something else which has the power to awaken us to the truth. It is the works of writers of...

At the very best, a mind enclosed in language is in prison. It is limited to the number of relations...

Humanism was not wrong in thinking that truth, beauty, liberty, and equality are of infinite value, ...

Whether the mask is labeled fascism, democracy, or dictatorship of the proletariat, our great advers...

If we go down into ourselves we find that we possess exactly what we desire.

Liberty, taking the word in its concrete sense, consists in the ability to choose.

If three steps are taken without any other motive than the desire to obey God, those three steps are...

Those who are unhappy have no need for anything in this world but people capable of giving them thei...

It is an eternal obligation toward the human being not to let him suffer from hunger when one has a ...

Charity. To love human beings in so far as they are nothing. That is to love them as God does.

It is to the prodigals...that the memory of their Father's house comes back. If the son had lived ec...

Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions reality can be attained only by someone who is detac...

To want friendship is a great fault. Friendship ought to be a gratuitous joy, like the joys afforded...

A work of art has an author and yet when it is perfect it has something which is anonymous about i...

Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life.

Today Relative to Yesterday or Tomorrow The future is made of the same stuff as the present.

One must always be prepared to switch sides with justice, that fugitive of the winning camp.

Fire destroys that which feeds it.

The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like the condemned man who is proud of his l...

There is one, and only one, thing in modern society more hideous than crime namely, repressive justi...

A hurtful act is the transference to others of the degradation which we bear in ourselves.

A mind enclosed in language is in prison.

The role of the intelligence - that part of us which affirms and denies and formulates opinions is m...

I can, therefore I am.

Affliction compels us to recognize as real what we do not think possible.

Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary go...

The sum of the particular intentions of God is the universe itself.

Two prisoners whose cells adjoin communicate with each other by knocking on the wall. The wall is th...

More than in any other performing arts the lack of respect for acting seems to spring from the fact ...

Those who serve a cause are not those who love that cause. They are those who love the life which ha...

Beauty always promises, but never gives anything.

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

We have to believe in a God who is like the true God in everything except that he does not exist, si...

Pain is the root of knowledge.

Equality is the public recognition, effectively expressed in institutions and manners, of the princi...

Evil being the root of mystery, pain is the root of knowledge.

Herein is a capital truth. It is not the natural capacity, the congenital gift, nor is it the effort...

There is something in our soul that loathes true attention much more violently than flesh loathes fa...

In struggling against anguish one never produces serenity the struggle against anguish only produces...

The joy of learning is as indispensable in study as breathing is in running. Where it is lacking the...

Those who love a cause are those who love the life which has to be led in order to serve it.

Grace fills empty spaces but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it and it is grace...

Men owe us what they imagine they will give us. We must forgive them this debt.

Imagination is always the fabric of social life and the dynamic of history. The influence of real ne...