Quotes By Simone Weil

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.

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.

More than in any other performing arts the lack of respect for acting seems to spring from the fact that every layman considers himself a valid critic.

The highest ecstasy is the attention at its fullest.

With no matter what human being, taken individually, I always find reasons for concluding that sorrow and misfortune do not suit him; either because he seems too mediocre for anything so great, or, on the contrary, too precious to be destroyed.

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

I am not a Catholic; but I consider the Christian idea, which has its roots in Greek thought and in the course of the centuries has nourished all of our European civilization, as something that one cannot renounce without becoming degraded.

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.

There is one, and only one, thing in modern society more hideous than crime namely, repressive justice.

We must prefer real hell to an imaginary paradise.

Force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it, or thinks he does, as it is to its victims; the second it crushes, the first it intoxicates. The truth is, nobody really possesses it.

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

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 kind of tyranny.

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.

Humility is attentive patience.

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.

Every time that I think of the crucifixion of Christ, I commit the sin of envy.

In struggling against anguish one never produces serenity; the struggle against anguish only produces new forms of anguish.

When once a certain class of people has been placed by the temporal and spiritual authorities outside the ranks of those whose life has value, then nothing comes more naturally to men than murder.

The contemporary form of true greatness lies in a civilization founded on the spirituality of work.

If we are suffering illness, poverty, or misfortune, we think we shall be satisfied on the day it ceases. But there too, we know it is false; so soon as one has got used to not suffering one wants something else.

To get power over is to defile. To possess is to defile.

In the Church, considered as a social organism, the mysteries inevitably degenerate into beliefs.

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

A mind enclosed in language is in prison.

Nothing is less instructive than a machine.

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 assistance.

The most important part of teaching is to teach what it is to know.

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

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.