62 quotes
It is because of my wretchedness that I am "I." It is on account of the wretchedness of the universe that, in a sense, God is "I" (that is to say a person).
Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986)
In every sphere, we seem to have lost the very elements of intelligence: the ideas of limit, measure, degree, proportion, relation, comparison, contingency, interdependence, interrelation of means and ends.
Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986)
If we want a love which will protect the soul from wounds we must love something other than God.
Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986)
The full expression of personality depends upon its being inflated by social prestige; it is a social privilege.
Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986)
Liberty, taking the word in its concrete sense, consists in the ability to choose.
Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986)
We should desire neither the immortality nor the death of any human being, whoever he may be, with whom we have to do.
Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986)
The miser deprives himself of his treasure because of his desire for it.
Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986)
To wish to escape from solitude is cowardice. Friendship is not to be sought, not to be dreamed, not to be desired; it is to be exercised (it is a virtue).
Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986)
It is not in a person's nature to desire what he already has. Desire is a tendency, the start of a movement toward something, toward a point from which one is absent.
Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986)
If all men, by the act of being born, are destined to suffer violence, that is a truth to which the empire of circumstances closes their minds.
Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986)
Rights are always asserted in a tone of contention; and when this tone is adopted, it must rely upon force in the background, or else it will be laughed at.
Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986)
From the power to transform him into a thing by killing him there proceeds another power, and much more prodigious, that which makes a thing of him while he still lives.
Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986)
What is called national prestige consists in behaving always in such a way as to demoralize other nations by giving them the impression that, if it comes to war, one would certainly defeat them.
Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986)
Meditation on the chance which led to the meeting of my mother and father is even more salutary than meditation on death.
Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986)
If a young girl is being forced into a brothel she will not talk about her rights. In such a situation the word would sound ludicrously inadequate.
Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986)
God's love for us is not the reason for which we should love him. God's love for us is the reason for us to love ourselves.
Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986)
Might is that which makes a thing of anybody who comes under its sway. When exercised to the full, it makes a thing of man in the most literal sense, for it makes him a corpse.
Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986)
The Great Beast is the only object of idolatry, the only ersatz of God, the only imitation of something which is infinitely far from me and which is I myself.
Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986)
We can know only 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 : An Anthology (1986)
It is only by entering the transcendental, the supernatural, the authentically spiritual order that man rises above the social. Until then, whatever he may do, the social is transcendent in relation to him.
Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986)