Simone Weil Quotes
We must not wish for the disappearance of our troubles but for the grace to transform them.
Pain and suffering are a kind of currency passed from hand to hand until they reach someone who receives them but does not pass them on.
There are only two things that pierce the human heart. One is beauty. The other is affliction.
If you want to know what a man is really like, take notice of how he acts when he loses money.
A hurtful act is the transference to others of the degradation which we bear in ourselves.
There is one, and only one, thing in modern society more hideous than crime namely, repressive justice.
Equality is the public recognition, effectively expressed in institutions and manners, of the principle that an equal degree of attention is due to the needs of all human beings.
More than in any other performing arts the lack of respect for acting seems to spring from the fact that every layman considers himself a valid critic.
Real genius is nothing else but the supernatural virtue of humility in the domain of thought.
God is rich in mercy. I know this wealth of his with the certainty of experience, I have touched it.
The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say, "What are you going through?
Stars and blossoming fruit-trees: utter permanence and extreme fragility give an equal sense of eternity.
Love consents to all and commands only those who consent. Love is abdication. God is abdication.
For when two beings who are not friends are near each other there is no meeting, and when friends are far apart there is no separation.
Every being cries out in silence to be read differently. Do not be indifferent to these cries.
The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like the condemned man who is proud of his large cell.
Human existence is so fragile a thing and exposed to such dangers that I cannot love without trembling.
It is a fault to wish to be understood before we have made ourselves clear to ourselves.
The sea is not less beautiful in our eyes because we know that sometimes ships are wrecked by it.
To die for God is not a proof of faith in God. To die for an unknown and repulsive convict who is a victim of injustice, that is a proof of faith in God.
Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.
I suffer more from the humiliations inflicted by my country than from those inflicted on her.
In struggling against anguish one never produces serenity; the struggle against anguish only produces new forms of anguish.
Difficult as it is really to listen to someone in affliction, it is just as difficult for him to know that compassion is listening to him.
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.
It is an eternal obligation toward the human being not to let him suffer from hunger when one has a chance of coming to his assistance.
At the centre of the human heart is the longing for an absolute good, a longing which is always there and is never appeased by any object in this world.
When once a certain class of people has been placed by the temporal and spiritual authorities outside the ranks of those whose life has value, then nothing comes more naturally to men than murder.
Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be attained only by someone who is detached.
The great error of nearly all studies of war... has been to consider war as an episode in foreign policies, when it is an act of interior politics.
