Simone Weil Quotes - Page 11

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• The authentic and pure values, truth, beauty, and goodness, in the activity of a human being are the result of one and the same act, a certain application of the full attention to the object. Teaching should have no aim but to prepare, by training the attention, for the possibility of such an act. All the other advantages of instruction are without interest.

  Simone Weil

  Teaching, Should Have, Training

  Simone Weil (2002). “Gravity and Grace”, p.120, Psychology Press

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• The soul is the human being considered as having a value in itself.

  Simone Weil

  Soul, Humans, Human Beings

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

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• The real stumbling-block of totalitarian regimes is not the spiritual need of men for freedom of thought; it is men's inability to stand the physical and nervous strain of a permanent state of excitement, except during a few years of their youth.

  Simone Weil

  Spiritual, Block, Real

  Simone Weil (2015). “Selected Essays, 1934-1943: Historical, Political, and Moral Writings”, p.189, Wipf and Stock Publishers

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• Evil is neither suffering nor sin; it is both at the same time, it is something common to them both. For they are linked together; sin makes us suffer and suffering makes us evil, and this indissoluble complex of suffering and sin is the evil in which we are submerged against our will, and to our horror.

  Simone Weil

  Evil, Suffering, Together

  Simone Weil (1998). “Simone Weil”

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• During the last quarter of a century all the authority associated with the function of spiritual guidance ... has seeped down into the lowest publications. ... Between a poem by Valéry and an advertisement for a beauty cream promising a rich marriage to anyone who used it there was at no point a breach of continuity. So as a result of literature's spiritual usurpation a beauty cream advertisement possessed, in the eyes of little village girls, the authority that was formerly attached to the words of priests.

  Simone Weil

  Girl, Spiritual, Eye

  "On Science, Necessity, and the Love of God". Book by Simone Weil. Translated by R. Rees, "Morality and literature," p. 164, 1968.

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• It is human misery and not pleasure which contains the secret of the divine wisdom.

  Simone Weil

  Divine Wisdom, Secret, Misery

  Simone Weil (2002). “Gravity and Grace”, p.93, Psychology Press

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• There is no detachment where there is no pain. And there is no pain endured without hatred or lying unless detachment is present too.

  Simone Weil

  Pain, Lying, Hatred

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• Every kind of reward constitutes a degradation of energy.

  Simone Weil

  Energy, Degradation, Rewards

  Simone Weil (2002). “Gravity and Grace”, p.8, Psychology Press

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• Gregorian chant, Romanesque architecture, the Iliad , the invention of geometry were not, for the people through whom they were brought into being and made available to us, occasions for the manifestation of personality.

  Simone Weil

  People, Personality, Architecture

  Simone Weil (2015). “Selected Essays, 1934-1943: Historical, Political, and Moral Writings”, p.13, Wipf and Stock Publishers

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• The Our Father contains all possible petitions; we cannot conceive of any prayer not already contained in it. It is to prayer what Christ is to humanity.

  Simone Weil

  Prayer, Father, Humanity

  "The Simone Weil Reader".

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• The word 'revolution' is a word for which you kill, for which you die, for which you send the labouring masses to their deaths; but which does not contain any content.

  Simone Weil

  Doe, Revolution, Mass

  Simone Weil (2013). “Oppression and Liberty”, p.53, Routledge

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• It may be that vice, depravity, and crime are nearly always, or even perhaps always, in their essence, attempts to eat beauty, to eat what we should only look at.

  Simone Weil

  Beauty, Essence, Vices

  Simone Weil (2009). “Waiting on God (Routledge Revivals)”, p.61, Routledge

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• If it were conceivable that in obeying God one should bring about one's own damnation whilst in disobeying him one could be saved, I should still choose the way of obedience.

  Simone Weil

  Damnation, Obeying God, Way

  Simone Weil (1979). “Waiting on God”, Routledge

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• One cannot imagine St. Francis of Assisi talking about rights.

  Simone Weil

  Humility, Rights, Talking

  Simone Weil (2014). “Letter to a Priest”, p.73, Routledge

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• One of the most exquisite pleasures of human love - to serve the loved one without his knowing it - is only possible, as regards the love of God, through atheism.

  Simone Weil

  Life, Knowing, Atheism

  Simone Weil (2015). “First and Last Notebooks: Supernatural Knowledge”, p.84, Wipf and Stock Publishers

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• It is not the cause for which men took up arms that makes a victory more just or less, it is the order that is established when arms have been laid down.

  Simone Weil

  Men, Order, Victory

  Simone Weil (2015). “Selected Essays, 1934-1943: Historical, Political, and Moral Writings”, p.139, Wipf and Stock Publishers

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• As for the spirit of poverty, I do not remember any moment when it was not in me, although only to that unhappily small extent compatible with my imperfection. I fell in love with Saint Francis of Assisi as soon as I came to know about him. I always believed and hoped that one day Fate would force upon me the condition of a vagabond and a beggar which he embraced freely. Actually I felt the same way about prison.

  Simone Weil

  Fate, Imperfection, One Day

  "Waiting on God (Routledge Revivals)".

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• To want friendship is a great fault. Friendship ought to be a gratuitous joy, like the joys afforded by art or life.

  Simone Weil

  Friendship, Art, Joy

  Simone Weil (2015). “First and Last Notebooks: Supernatural Knowledge”, p.43, Wipf and Stock Publishers

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• We can only know one thing about God - that he is what we are not. Our wretchedness alone is an image of this. The more we contemplate it, the more we contemplate him.

  Simone Weil

  God, Contemplating, Wretchedness

  "Attention and Will (1947)". "Gravity and Grace". Book by Simone Weil, p. 216, 1947.

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• It is precisely those artists and writers who are most inclined to think of their art as the manifestation of their personality who are in fact the most in bondage to public taste.

  Simone Weil

  Art, Creativity, Thinking

  Simone Weil (2014). “Letter to a Priest”, p.65, Routledge

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• Whoever is uprooted himself uproots others. Whoever is rooted himself doesn't uproot others.

  Simone Weil

  Roots, Rooted

  Simone Weil (2003). “The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties Towards Mankind”, p.45, Routledge

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• There are only two sorts of greatness: true greatness, which is of a spiritual order, and the old, old lie of world conquest. Conquest is an ersatz greatness.

  Simone Weil

  Spiritual, Lying, Greatness

  Simone Weil (2003). “The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties Towards Mankind”, p.94, Routledge

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• Evil being the root of mystery, pain is the root of knowledge.

  Simone Weil

  Pain, Roots, Evil

  Simone Weil (2015). “First and Last Notebooks: Supernatural Knowledge”, p.69, Wipf and Stock Publishers

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• Academic work is one of those fields which contain a pearl so precious that it is worth while to sell all our possessions, keeping nothing for ourselves, in order to be able to acquire it.

  Simone Weil

  Education, Order, Academic Work

  Simone Weil (2009). “Waiting on God (Routledge Revivals)”, p.36, Routledge

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• Attachment is a manufacturer of illusion and whoever wants reality ought to be detached.

  Simone Weil

  Reality, Attachment, Want

  Simone Weil (2002). “Gravity and Grace”, p.14, Psychology Press

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