Quotes By Simone Weil

To be a hero or a heroine, one must give an order to oneself.

For when two beings who are not friends are near each other there is no meeting, and when friends are far apart there is no separation.

I can, therefore I am.

Those who are unhappy have no need for anything in this world but people capable of giving them their attention.

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

A hurtful act is the transference to others of the degradation which we bear in ourselves.

A self-respecting nation is ready for anything, including war, except for a renunciation of its option to make war.

The poison of skepticism becomes, like alcoholism, tuberculosis, and some other diseases, much more virulent in a hitherto virgin soil.

In the intellectual order, the virtue of humility is nothing more nor less than the power of attention.

All sins are attempts to fill voids.

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 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.

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.

The highest ecstasy is the attention at its fullest.

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.

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

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.