Simone Weil Quotes - Page 4

Quotes about:

• We do injury to a child if we bring it up in a narrow Christianity, which prevents it from ever becoming capable of perceiving that there are treasures of purest gold to be found in non-Christian civilizations. Laical education does an even greater injury to children. It covers up those treasures, and those of Christianity as well.

  Simone Weil

  Christian, Children, Civilization

  Simone Weil (2003). “The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties Towards Mankind”, p.91, Routledge

  26 Copy quote

• Contradiction is the lever of transcendence.

  Simone Weil

  Levers, Contradiction, Transcendence

  6 Copy quote

• The essential thing to know about God is that God is Good. All the rest is secondary.

  Simone Weil

  Religion, Essentials, Knows

  9 Copy quote

• A mind enclosed in language is in prison.

  Simone Weil

  Mind, Language, Prison

  Simone Weil (2015). “Selected Essays, 1934-1943: Historical, Political, and Moral Writings”, p.26, Wipf and Stock Publishers

  14 Copy quote

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

  Simone Weil

  Grief, Struggle, Serenity

  26 Copy quote

• It is not religion but revolution which is the opium of the people.

  Simone Weil

  People, Revolution, Opium

  Simone Weil (2013). “The Notebooks of Simone Weil”, p.596, Routledge

  10 Copy quote

• 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.

  Simone Weil

  Nursing, Compassion, Listening

  Simone Weil (1973). “Waiting for God: Translated by Emma Craufurd ; With an Introd. by Leslie A. Fiedler”

  26 Copy quote

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

  Simone Weil

  Time, Past, Crime

  Simone Weil (2003). “The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties Towards Mankind”, p.48, Routledge

  9 Copy quote

• The extreme greatness of Christianity lies in the fact that it does not seek a supernatural remedy for suffering but a supernatural use for it.

  Simone Weil

  Lying, Greatness, Suffering

  Simone Weil (2002). “Gravity and Grace”, p.81, Psychology Press

  13 Copy quote

• The afflicted are not listened to. They are like someone whose tongue has been cut out and who occasionally forgets the fact. When they move their lips no ear perceives any sound. And they themselves soon sink into impotence in the use of language, because of the certainty of not being heard.

  Simone Weil

  Moving, Cutting, Suffering

  Simone Weil (2015). “Selected Essays, 1934-1943: Historical, Political, and Moral Writings”, p.28, Wipf and Stock Publishers

  70 Copy quote

• Everything without exception which is of value in me comes from somewhere other than myself, not as a gift but as a loan which must be ceaselessly renewed.

  Simone Weil

  Loan, Exception, Values

  Simone Weil (2002). “Gravity and Grace”, p.31, Psychology Press

  6 Copy quote

• The virtue of hope is an orientation of the soul towards a transformation after which it will be wholly and exclusively love.

  Simone Weil

  Soul, Transformation, Virtue

  Simone Weil (2014). “Letter to a Priest”, p.37, Routledge

  8 Copy quote

• We cannot take a step toward the heavens. God crosses the universe and comes to us.

  Simone Weil

  Heaven, Steps, Crosses

  Simone Weil (2009). “Waiting on God (Routledge Revivals)”, p.45, Routledge

  10 Copy quote

• Two prisoners whose cells adjoin communicate with each other by knocking on the wall. The wall is the thing which separates them but is also their means of communication. It is the same with us and God. Every separation is a link.

  Simone Weil

  God, Wall, Communication

  Simone Weil (1952). “Gravity and Grace”, p.200, U of Nebraska Press

  18 Copy quote

• All the tragedies which we can imagine return in the end to the one and only tragedy: the passage of time.

  Simone Weil

  Tragedy, Return, Imagine

  Simone Weil (1978). “Lectures on Philosophy”, p.197, Cambridge University Press

  4 Copy quote

• It is only necessary to know that love is a direction and not a state of the soul. If one is unaware of this, one falls to despair at the first onslaught of affliction.

  Simone Weil

  Love, Fall, Soul

  Simone Weil (2009). “Waiting on God (Routledge Revivals)”, p.46, Routledge

  8 Copy quote

• Humility is attentive patience.

  Simone Weil

  Patience, Humble, Humility

  Simone Weil (2015). “First and Last Notebooks: Supernatural Knowledge”, p.111, Wipf and Stock Publishers

  15 Copy quote

• When war is waged, it is for the purpose of safeguarding or increasing one's capacity to make war. International politics are wholly involved in this vicious cycle. 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. What is called national security is an imaginary state of affairs in which one would retain the capacity to make war while depriving all other countries of it.

  Simone Weil

  Country, War, Giving

  "The Power of Words (1937)". "Selected Essays 1934-1943". Book y Simone Weil, translated by Richard Rees, p. 224, 1957.

  43 Copy quote

• We have to try to cure our faults by attention and not by will.

  Simone Weil

  Trying, Attention, Faults

  Simone Weil (2002). “Gravity and Grace”, p.116, Psychology Press

  12 Copy quote

• When we hit a nail with a hammer, the whole of the shock received by the large head of the nail passes into the point without any of it being lost, although it is only a point. If the hammer and the head of the nail were infinitely big it would be just the same. The point of the nail would transmit this infinite shock at the point to which it was applied. Extreme affliction, which means physical pain, distress of soul and social degradation, all at the same time, constitutes the nail. The point is applied at the very center of the soul, whose head is all necessity, spreading throughout space and time.

  Simone Weil

  Pain, Mean, Space

  "Waiting on God (Routledge Revivals)".

  41 Copy quote

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

  Simone Weil

  Inspirational, Inspiring, Real

  Simone Weil (2015). “Selected Essays, 1934-1943: Historical, Political, and Moral Writings”, p.25, Wipf and Stock Publishers

  64 Copy quote

• When a man's life is destroyed or damaged by some wound or privation of soul or body, which is due to other men's actions or negligence, it is not only his sensibility that suffers but also his aspiration toward the good. Therefore there has been sacrilege towards that which is sacred in him.

  Simone Weil

  Men, Soul, Suffering

  Simone Weil (2015). “Selected Essays, 1934-1943: Historical, Political, and Moral Writings”, p.221, Wipf and Stock Publishers

  54 Copy quote

• To us, men of the West, a very strange thing happened at the turn of the century; without noticing it, we lost science, or at least the thing that had been called by that name for the last four centuries. What we now have in place of it is something different, radically different, and we don't know what it is. Nobody knows what it is.

  Simone Weil

  Science, Men, Names

  7 Copy quote

• Human existence is so fragile a thing and exposed to such dangers that I cannot love without trembling.

  Simone Weil

  Danger, Trembling, Existence

  Simone Weil (2002). “Gravity and Grace”, p.13, Psychology Press

  37 Copy quote

• Purity is the ability to contemplate defilement.

  Simone Weil

  Purity, Ability, Contemplating

  Simone Weil (2013). “The Notebooks of Simone Weil”, p.290, Routledge

  7 Copy quote

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