Simone Weil Quotes

239 quotes in 2557 categories

• 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…
• Charity. To love human beings in so far as they are nothing. That is to love them as God does.
• The highest ecstasy is the attention at its fullest.
• There is no detachment where there is no pain. And there is no pain endured without hatred or lying unless detachment is present too.
• As soon as men know that they can kill without fear of punishment or blame, they kill; or at least they encourage killers with approving…
• To want friendship is a great fault. Friendship ought to be a gratuitous joy, like the joys afforded by art or life.
• The danger is not lest the soul should doubt whether there is any bread, but lest, by a lie, it should persuade itself that it…
• To set up as a standard of public morality a notion which can neither be defined nor conceived is to open the door to every…
• 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…
• We must prefer real hell to an imaginary paradise.
• Every time that I think of the crucifixion of Christ, I commit the sin of envy.
• The mysteries of faith are degraded if they are made into an object of affirmation and negation, when in reality they should be an object…
• A mind enclosed in language is in prison.
• Every perfect life is a parable invented by God.
• Real genius is nothing else but the supernatural virtue of humility in the domain of thought.
• A self-respecting nation is ready for anything, including war, except for a renunciation of its option to make war.
• Oppression that is clearly inexorable and invincible does not give rise to revolt but to submission.
• The contemporary form of true greatness lies in a civilization founded on the spirituality of work.
• The poison of skepticism becomes, like alcoholism, tuberculosis, and some other diseases, much more virulent in a hitherto virgin soil.
• There is one, and only one, thing in modern society more hideous than crime namely, repressive justice.

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