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Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.

— Simone Weil Gravity and Grace (1947)

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Good and Evil

More quotes by Simone Weil

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

The most important part of education — to teach the meaning of to know (in the scientific sense).

Waiting on God (1950)

Stars and blossoming fruit-trees: utter permanence and extreme fragility give an equal sense of eternity.

Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986)

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

Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986)

Men of the most brilliant intelligence can be born, live and die in error and falsehood.

Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986)

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False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.

Socrates

I believe in evil. It is the property of all those who are certain of truth. Despair and fanaticism are only differing manifestations of evil.

Edward Teller

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.

C. S. Lewis God in the Dock (1970)

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve.

Henry David Thoreau Walden (1854)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Simone Weil (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.