Best 348 quotes of Simone Weil on MyQuotes

A beautiful woman looking at her image in the mirror may very well believe the image is herself. An ugly woman knows it is not.

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.

A doctrine serves no purpose in itself, but it is indispensable to have one if only to avoid being deceived by false doctrines.

Affliction hardens and discourages us because, like a red hot iron, it stamps the soul to its very depths with the scorn, the disgust, and even the self-hatred and sense of guilt that crime logically should produce but actually does not.

Algebra and money are essentially levelers; the first intellectually, the second effectively.

All sins are attempts to fill voids.

All the goods of this world...are finite and limited and radically incapable of satisfying the desire that perpetually burns within us for an infinite and perfect good.

All the natural movements of the soul are controlled by laws analogous to those of physical gravity. Grace is the only exception. Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes this void. The imagination is continually at work filling up all the fissures through which grace might pass.

All those who possess in its pure state the love of their neighbour and the acceptance of the order of the world, inclucing affliction-all those, even should they live and die to all appearances atheists, are surely saved.

A man whose mind feels that it is captive would prefer to blind himself to the fact. But if he hates falsehood, he will not do so; and in that case he will have to suffer a lot. He will beat his head against the wall until he faints. He will come to again

A modern factory reaches perhaps almost the limit of horror. Everybody in it is constantly harassed and kept on edge by the interference of extraneous wills while the soul is left in cold desolate misery. What man needs is silence and warmth; what he is given is an icy pandemonium. Physical labor may be painful, but it is not degrading as such. It is not art; it is not science; it is something else, possessing an exactly equal value with art and science, for it provides an equal opportunity to reach the impersonal stage of attention.

An atheist may be simply one whose faith and love are concentrated on the impersonal aspects of God.

An imaginary perfection is automatically at the same level as I who imagine it neither higher nor lower.

A Pharisee is someone who is virtuous out of obedience to the Great Beast.

Armies under the control of ... a sovereign State cannot bring freedom to anyone.

Art has no immediate future, because all art is collective and there is no more collective life.

Art is the symbol of the two noblest human efforts: to construct and to refrain from destruction.

A science which does not bring us nearer to God is worthless.

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

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.

A society like the Church, which claims to be Divine is perhaps more dangerous on account of the ersatz good which it contains then on account of the evil which sullies it. Something of the social labelled divine: an intoxicating mixture which carries with it every sort of license. Devil disguised.

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.

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.

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

Attentiveness is the heart of prayer.

At the bottom of the heart of every human being, from earliest infancy until the tomb, there is something that goes on indomitably expecting, in the teeth of all experience of crimes committed, suffered, and witnessed, that good and not evil will be done

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.

A well ordered society would be one where the State only had a negative action, comparable to that of a rudder: a light pressure at the right moment to counteract the first suggestion of any loss of equilibrium.

A work of art has an author and yet, when it is perfect, it has something which is anonymous about it.

Beauty always promises, but never gives anything.

Beauty captivates the flesh in order to obtain permission to pass right through to the soul. . . . When the feeling for beauty happens to be associated with the sight of some human being, the transference of love is made possible, at any rate in an illusory manner. But it is all the beauty of the world, it is universal beauty, for which we yearn.

Beauty is a fruit which we look at without trying to seize it.

Because no other could do it, he himself went to the greatest possible distance, the infinite distance. This infinite distance between God and God, this supreme tearing apart, this incomparable agony, this marvel of love, is the crucifixion. Nothing can be further from God than that which has been made accursed.

Bourgeois society is infected by monomania: the monomania of accounting. For it, the only thing that has value is what can be counted in francs and centimes. It never hesitates to sacrifice human life to figures which look well on paper, such as national budgets or industrial balance sheets.

Capitalism has brought about the emancipation of collective humanity with respect to nature. But this collective humanity has itself taken on with respect to the individual the oppressive function formerly exercised by nature.

Charity. To love human beings in so far as they are nothing. That is to love them as God does.

Christ himself came down and took possession of me. . . I had never foreseen the possibility of that, of a real contact, person to person, here below, between a human being and God. . . in this sudden possession of me by Christ, neither my sense nor my imagination had any part: I only felt in the midst of my suffering the presence of a love.

Compassion directed to oneself is humility.

Compassion directed toward oneself is true humility.

Concern for the symbol has completely disappeared from our science . And yet, if one were to give oneself the trouble, one could easily find, in certain parts at least of contemporary mathematics... symbols as clear, as beautiful, and as full of spiritual meaning as that of the circle and mediation. From modern thought to ancient wisdom the path would be short and direct, if one cared to take it.

Conformity is an imitation of grace.

Contemplating an object fixedly with the mind, asking myself, 'What is it?' without thinking of any other object or relating it to anything else for hours on end.

Contradiction is the lever of transcendence.

Contradiction itself, far from always being a criterion of error, is sometimes a sign of truth.

Creation is an act of love and it is perpetual.

Death. An instantaneous state, without past or future. Indispensable for entering eternity.

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.

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.

Education-whether its object be children or adults, individuals or an entire people-consists in creating motives.

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.