Simone Weil Quotes

The supernatural virtue of justice consists of behaving exactly as though there were equality when one is the stronger in an unequal relationship.

The feeding of those that are hungry is a form of contemplation.

Every kind of reward constitutes a degradation of energy.

Men owe us what we imagine they will give us. We must forgive them this debt.

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.

one is never got out of the cave, one comes out of it.

Whatever debases the intelligence degrades the entire human being.

We only possess what we renounce; what we do not renounce escapes from us.

Modern life is given over to immoderation. Immoderation invades everything: actions and thought, public and private life.

The miser deprives himself of his treasure because of his desire for it.

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

If someone does me injury I must desire that this injury shall not degrade me. I must desire this out of love for him who inflicts it, in order that he may not really have done evil.

It is precisely those artists and writers who are most inclined to think of their art as the manifestation of their personality who are in fact the most in bondage to public taste.

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.

Creation is an act of love and it is perpetual.

Sin is nothing else but the failure to recognize human wretchedness.

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

There are only two sorts of greatness: true greatness, which is of a spiritual order, and the old, old lie of world conquest. Conquest is an ersatz greatness.

We cannot take a single step toward heaven. It is not in our power to travel in a vertical direction. If however we look heavenward for a long time, God comes and takes us up.

One of the most exquisite pleasures of human love - to serve the loved one without his knowing it - is only possible, as regards the love of God, through atheism.

The demonstrable correlation of opposites is an image of the transcendental correlation of contradictories.

Only he who has measured the dominion of force, and knows how not to respect it, is capable of love andjustice.

What hope is there for innocence if it is not recognized?

It is human misery and not pleasure which contains the secret of the divine wisdom.

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

When literature becomes deliberately indifferent to the opposition of good and evil it betrays its function and forfeits all claim to excellence.

The poet produces the beautiful by fixing his attention on something real.

If there were no affliction in this world we might think we were in paradise.

The soul is the human being considered as having a value in itself.

[We are not] to take one step, even in the direction of what is good, beyond that to which we are irresistibly impelled by God, and this applies to action, word, and thought.

Official history is believing the murderers at their word.

Only an indirect method is effective. We do nothing if we have not first drawn back.

Truth is one, but error is manifold.

There is a certain kind of morality which is even more alien to good and evil than amorality is.

There is nothing that comes closer to true humility than the intelligence. It is impossible to feel pride in one's intelligence at the moment when one really and truly exercises it.

In what concerns divine things, belief is not appropriate. Only certainty will do. Anything less than certainty is unworthy of God.

The Our Father contains all possible petitions; we cannot conceive of any prayer not already contained in it. It is to prayer what Christ is to humanity.

Two forces rule the universe: light and gravity.

One might lay down as a postulate: All conceptions of God which are incompatible with a movement of pure charity are false. All other conceptions of him, in varying degree, are true.

The contradictions the mind comes up against, these are the only realities, the criterion of the real. There is no contradiction in what is imaginary. Contradiction is the test of necessity.

Punishment is a vital need of the human soul.

Whoever is uprooted himself uproots others. Whoever is rooted himself doesn't uproot others.

We possess nothing in the world - a mere chance can strip us of everything - except the power to say 'I.

A right which goes unrecognized by anybody is not worth very much.

Someone who does not see a pane of glass is not aware of not seeing it.

It may be that vice, depravity, and crime are nearly always, or even perhaps always, in their essence, attempts to eat beauty, to eat what we should only look at.

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

Distance is the soul of beauty.

The full expression of personality depends upon its being inflated by social prestige; it is a social privilege.

It is impossible that the whole of truth should not be present at every time and every place, available for anyone who desires it.