Simone Weil Quotes

Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.

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.

The joy of learning is as indispensable in study as breathing is in running.

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.

Stars and blossoming fruit-trees: utter permanence and extreme fragility give an equal sense of eternity.

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?

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

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.

Official history is a matter of believing murderers on their own word.

Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil but as a necessity, or even a duty.

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.

To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.

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

Everything beautiful has a mark of eternity.

The sea is not less beautiful in our eyes because we know that sometimes ships are wrecked by it.

It is a fault to wish to be understood before we have made ourselves clear to ourselves.

Whenever one tries to suppress doubt , there is tyranny .

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.

Every sin is an attempt to fly from emptiness.

I suffer more from the humiliations inflicted by my country than from those inflicted on her.

Love is not consolation, it is light.

Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.

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.

The beauty of the world is Christ's tender smile for us coming through matter.

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.

In struggling against anguish one never produces serenity; the struggle against anguish only produces new forms of anguish.

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

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.

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.

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.

Fortunately the sky is beautiful everywhere.

Every perfect life is a parable invented by God.

I can, therefore I am.

Patriotism is idolatry of the self.

Love: To feel with one's whole self the existence of another being.

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

Science is voiceless; it is the scientists who talk.

The highest ecstasy is the attention at its fullest.

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.