Simone Weil Quotes

Quotes about:

• We must not wish for the disappearance of our troubles but for the grace to transform them.

  Simone Weil

  Christian, Religious, Adversity

  153 Copy quote

• Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.

  Simone Weil

  Kindness, Caring, Generosity

  Letter to Joë Bousquet on April 13, 1942. "Correspondance", published by Editions l'Age d'Homme in Lausanne, p. 18, 1982.

  170 Copy quote

• 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.

  Simone Weil

  Pain, Hands, Suffering

  141 Copy quote

• Just as the power of the sun is the only force in the natural universe that causes a plant to grow against gravity, so the grace of God is the only force in the spiritual universe that causes a person to grow against the gravity of their own ego.

  Simone Weil

  Spiritual, Humility, Acceptance

  117 Copy quote

• The need of truth is more sacred than any other need.

  Simone Weil

  Needs, Sacred, Truth Is

  "The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties Towards Mankind".

  9 Copy quote

• There are only two things that pierce the human heart. One is beauty. The other is affliction.

  Simone Weil

  Beauty, Heart, Two

  121 Copy quote

• The joy of learning is as indispensable in study as breathing is in running. Where it is lacking there are no real students, but only poor caricatures of apprentices who, at the end of their apprenticeship, will not even have a trade.

  Simone Weil

  Running, Real, Teaching

  Simone Weil (2009). “Waiting on God (Routledge Revivals)”, p.34, Routledge

  22 Copy quote

• Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it is the person crushed who feels what is happening. Unless one has placed oneself on the side of the oppressed, to feel with them, one cannot understand.

  Simone Weil

  Crush, Sides, Oppression

  Simone Weil (1978). “Lectures on Philosophy”, p.139, Cambridge University Press

  116 Copy quote

• The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say, "What are you going through?

  Simone Weil

  Love, Inspirational, Friendship

  Simone Weil (1973). “Waiting for God”

  65 Copy quote

• Whenever one tries to suppress doubt , there is tyranny .

  Simone Weil

  Doubt, Trying, Tyranny

  Simone Weil (1978). “Lectures on Philosophy”, p.103, Cambridge University Press

  35 Copy quote

• To us, men of the West, a very strange thing happened at the turn of the century; without noticing it, we lost science, or at least the thing that had been called by that name for the last four centuries. What we now have in place of it is something different, radically different, and we don't know what it is. Nobody knows what it is.

  Simone Weil

  Science, Men, Names

  7 Copy quote

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

  Simone Weil

  Soul, Important, Needs

  Simone Weil (2003). “The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties Towards Mankind”, p.43, Routledge

  42 Copy quote

• Compassion directed toward oneself is true humility.

  Simone Weil

  Humility, Compassion, Oneself

  13 Copy quote

• To be always relevant, you have to say things which are eternal.

  Simone Weil

  Christian, Prayer, Religion

  11 Copy quote

• The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like the condemned man who is proud of his large cell.

  Simone Weil

  Pride, Intelligent, Men

  Simone Weil (2015). “Selected Essays, 1934-1943: Historical, Political, and Moral Writings”, p.26, Wipf and Stock Publishers

  45 Copy quote

• All sins are attempts to fill voids.

  Simone Weil

  Inspirational, Memorable, Void

  La Pesanteur et la Grace "Desirer sans Objet" (1948)

  20 Copy quote

• Whether the mask is labeled fascism, democracy, or dictatorship of the proletariat, our great adversary remains the apparatus—the bureaucracy, the police, the military. Not the one facing us across the frontier of the battle lines, which is not so much our enemy as our brothers' enemy, but the one that calls itself our protector and makes us its slaves. No matter what the circumstances, the worst betrayal will always be to subordinate ourselves to this apparatus and to trample underfoot, in its service, all human values in ourselves and in others.

  Simone Weil

  Brother, Betrayal, Military

  74 Copy quote

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

  Simone Weil

  Love You, Self, Existence

  Simone Weil (2015). “First and Last Notebooks: Supernatural Knowledge”, p.9, Wipf and Stock Publishers

  24 Copy quote

• God's love for us is not the reason for which we should love him. God's love for us is the reason for us to love ourselves.

  Simone Weil

  Reason, Should, God's Love

  Simone Weil (2002). “Gravity and Grace”, p.62, Psychology Press

  20 Copy quote

• The only way into truth is through one's own annihilation; through dwelling a long time in a state of extreme and total humiliation.

  Simone Weil

  Truth, Dwelling, Long

  Simone Weil (2015). “Selected Essays, 1934-1943: Historical, Political, and Moral Writings”, p.27, Wipf and Stock Publishers

  11 Copy quote

• 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.

  Simone Weil

  Heart, World, Longing

  Simone Weil, Janet Patricia Little (2003). “Simone Weil on Colonialism: An Ethic of the Other”, p.21, Rowman & Littlefield

  23 Copy quote

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

  Simone Weil

  Wish, Faults, Made

  Simone Weil (2002). “Gravity and Grace”, p.66, Psychology Press

  33 Copy quote

• Do not allow yourself to be imprisoned by any affection. Keep your solitude. The day, if it ever comes, when you are given true affection, there will be no opposition between interior solitude and friendship, quite the reverse. It is even by this infallible sigh that you will recognize it.

  Simone Weil

  Single, Solitude, Affection

  Simone Weil (2002). “Gravity and Grace”, p.67, Psychology Press

  9 Copy quote

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

  Simone Weil

  Tyrants, Evil, Politics

  Simone Weil (2002). “Gravity and Grace”, p.71, Psychology Press

  53 Copy quote

• Power ... is the supreme end for all those who have not understood.

  Simone Weil

  Power, Ends, Understood

  Simone Weil (2002). “Gravity and Grace”, p.146, Psychology Press

  19 Copy quote

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