37 quotes by Simone Weil

“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

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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

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“Most works of art, like most wines, ought to be consumed in the district of their fabrication.” — Simone Weil

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“Beauty always promises, but never gives anything.” — Simone Weil

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“Humanism was not wrong in thinking that truth, beauty, liberty, and equality are of infinite value, but in thinking that man can get them for himself without grace.” — Simone Weil

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“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.” — Simone Weil

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“Two prisoners whose cells adjoin communicate with each other by knocking on the wall. The wall is the thing which separates them but is also their means of communication. It is the same with us and God. Every separation is a link.” — Simone Weil

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“A test of what is real is that it is hard and rough. Joys are found in it, not pleasure. What is pleasant belongs to dreams.” — Simone Weil

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“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.” — Simone Weil

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“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 of contemplation.” — Simone Weil

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“An atheist may be simply one whose faith and love are concentrated on the impersonal aspects of God.” — Simone Weil

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“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 smiles.” — Simone Weil

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“If Germany, thanks to Hitler and his successors, were to enslave the European nations and destroy most of the treasures of their past, future historians would certainly pronounce that she had civilized Europe.” — Simone Weil

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“The future is made of the same stuff as the present.” — Simone Weil

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“A science which does not bring us nearer to God is worthless.” — Simone Weil

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“Charity. To love human beings in so far as they are nothing. That is to love them as God does.” — Simone Weil

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“Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions reality can be attained only by someone who is detached.” — Simone Weil

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“Imagination is always the fabric of social life and the dynamic of history. The influence of real needs and compulsions, of real interests and materials, is indirect because the crowd is never conscious of it.” — Simone Weil

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“The only hope of socialism resides in those who have already brought about in themselves, as far as is possible in the society of today, that union between manual and intellectual labor which characterizes the society we are aiming at.” — Simone Weil

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“Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life.” — Simone Weil

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“The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like the condemned man who is proud of his large cell.” — Simone Weil

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“The role of the intelligence - that part of us which affirms and denies and formulates opinions is merely to submit.” — Simone Weil

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“Whatever debases the intelligence degrades the entire human being.” — Simone Weil

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“Evil being the root of mystery, pain is the root of knowledge.” — Simone Weil

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“I can, therefore I am.” — Simone Weil

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