Simone Weil Quotes | GloryQuotes

Simone Weil Quotes About Spiritual

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

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

The danger is not lest the soul should doubt whether there is any bread, but lest, by a lie, it should persuade itself that it is not hungry.

There can be a true grandeur in any degree of submissiveness, because it springs from loyalty to the laws and to an oath, and not from baseness of soul.

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.

Simone Weil Quotes About Life

Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life.

Every perfect life is a parable invented by God.

Life does not need to mutilate itself in order to be pure.

Imagination is always the fabric of social life and the dynamic of history. The influence of real needs and compulsions, of real interests and materials, is indirect because the crowd is never conscious of it.

More Quotes by Simone Weil

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

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

What a country calls its vital... interests are not things that help its people live, but things that help it make war.

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

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

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

Culture is an instrument wielded by teachers to manufacture teachers, who, in their turn, will manufacture still more teachers.

The only way into truth is through one's own annihilation; through dwelling a long time in a state of extreme and total humiliation.

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

Nothing can have as its destination anything other than its origin. The contrary idea, the idea of progress, is poison.

Most works of art, like most wines, ought to be consumed in the district of their fabrication.

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

I suffer more from the humiliations inflicted by my country than from those inflicted on her.

Real genius is nothing else but the supernatural virtue of humility in the domain of thought.

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

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

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

Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be attained only by someone who is detached.

The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like the condemned man who is proud of his large cell.

Evil, when we are in its power, is not felt as evil, but as a necessity, even a duty.

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

The destruction of the past is perhaps the greatest of all crimes.

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.

The future is made of the same stuff as the present.

Oppression that is clearly inexorable and invincible does not give rise to revolt but to submission.

When a contradiction is impossible to resolve except by a lie, then we know that it is really a door.

Who were the fools who spread the story that brute force cannot kill ideas? Nothing is easier. And once they are dead they are no more than corpses.

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

Evil being the root of mystery, pain is the root of knowledge.

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

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

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.

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.

Petroleum is a more likely cause of international conflict than wheat.

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.

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.

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

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.

Humanism was not wrong in thinking that truth, beauty, liberty, and equality are of infinite value, but in thinking that man can get them for himself without grace.

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

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

Difficult as it is really to listen to someone in affliction, it is just as difficult for him to know that compassion is listening to him.

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.

It is not the cause for which men took up arms that makes a victory more just or less, it is the order that is established when arms have been laid down.

A mind enclosed in language is in prison.

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.

Browse 79 quotes attributed to Simone Weil, listed in the source data as a French Philosopher, organized around themes such as Spiritual, Life, Time. Use the topic links to explore similar quotes, or browse the full author collection in one place.