Simone Weil Quotes
It is only the impossible that is possible for God. He has given over the possible to the mechanics of matter and the autonomy of his creatures.
It is only from the light which streams constantly from heaven that a tree can derive the energy to strike its roots deep into the soil. The tree is in fact rooted in the sky.
An atheist may be simply one whose faith and love are concentrated on the impersonal aspects of God.
Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes this void.
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).
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.
How many people have been thus led, through lack of self-confidence, to stifle their most justified doubts?
There can be a true grandeur in any degree of submissiveness, because it springs from loyalty to the laws and to an oath, and not from baseness of soul.
The whole evolution of present-day society tends to develop the various forms of bureaucratic oppression and to give them a sort of autonomy in regard to capitalism as such.
The villagers seldom leave the village; many scientists have limited and poorly cultivated minds apart from their specialty.
To write the lives of the great in separating them from their works necessarily ends by above all stressing their pettiness, because it is in their work that they have put the best of themselves.
The only way into truth is through one's own annihilation; through dwelling a long time in a state of extreme and total humiliation.
We do not obtain the most precious gifts by going in search of them but by waiting for them.
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.
You could not be born at a better period than the present, when we have lost everything.
Today it is not nearly enough to be a saint, but we must have the saintliness demanded by the present moment, a new saintliness, itself also without precedent.
When a contradiction is impossible to resolve except by a lie, then we know that it is really a door.
Attachment is a manufacturer of illusion and whoever wants reality ought to be detached.
A doctrine serves no purpose in itself, but it is indispensable to have one if only to avoid being deceived by false doctrines.
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.
The poison of skepticism becomes, like alcoholism, tuberculosis, and some other diseases, much more virulent in a hitherto virgin soil.
The contemporary form of true greatness lies in a civilization founded upon the spirituality of work.
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.
A beautiful woman looking at her image in the mirror may very well believe the image is herself. An ugly woman knows it is not.
The role of the intelligence - that part of us which affirms and denies and formulates opinions is merely to submit.
To want friendship is a great fault. Friendship ought to be a gratuitous joy, like the joys afforded by art or life.
The virtue of hope is an orientation of the soul towards a transformation after which it will be wholly and exclusively love.
In reality nothing is so beautiful as the good, nothing is so monotonous and boring as evil.
The struggle between the opponents and defenders of capitalism is a struggle between innovators who do not know what innovation to make and conservatives who do not know what to conserve.
