Simone Weil Quotes (193 quotes, page 3)

“Alexander is to a peasant proprietor what Don Juan is to a happily married husband.”

Simone Weil book Gravity and Grace

Source: Gravity and Grace (1947), p. 78, (1972 edition)

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

Simone Weil

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), Contradiction (1947), p. 240

Imagination , Perfection

“The prestige which constitutes three-fourths of might is first of all made up of that superb indifference which the powerful have for the weak, an indifference so contagious that it is communicated even to those who are its object.”

Simone Weil

Le prestige, qui constitue la force plus qu'aux trois quarts, est fait avant tout de la superbe indifférence du fort pour les faibles, indifférence si contagieuse qu'elle se communique à ceux qui en sont l'objet.
in The Simone Weil Reader, p. 168
Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), The Iliad or The Poem of Force (1940-1941)

Communication , Indifference

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

Simone Weil

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), Human Personality (1943), p. 64

Dependency , Personality

“Those who keep the masses of men in subjection by exercising force and cruelty deprive them at once of two vital foods, liberty and obedience; for it is no longer within the power of such masses to accord their inner consent to the authority to which they are subjected. Those who encourage a state of things in which the hope of gain is the principal motive take away from men their obedience, for consent which is its essence is not something which can be sold.”

Simone Weil

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), The Needs of the Soul (1949), p. 97

Men , Food , Hope , Exercises

“The state of conformity is an imitation of grace.”

Simone Weil

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), The Great Beast (1947), p. 124
Context: The state of conformity is an imitation of grace. By a strange mystery — which is connected with the power of the social element — a profession can confer on quite ordinary men in their exercise of it, virtues which, if they were extended to all circumstances of life, would make of them heroes or saints.
But the power of the social element makes these virtues natural. Accordingly they need a compensation.

“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

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), The Self (1947), p. 83

God , Sense , Universe , Personality

“There are necessities and impossibilities in reality which do not obtain in fiction, any more than the law of gravity to which we are subject controls what is represented in a picture. … It is the same with pure good; for a necessity as strong as gravity condemns man to evil and forbids him any good, or only within the narrowest limits and laboriously obtained and soiled and adulterated with evil. … The simplicity which makes the fictional good something insipid and unable to hold the attention becomes, in the real good, an unfathomable marvel.”

Simone Weil

“Morality and literature,” pp. 160-161
On Science, Necessity, and the Love of God (1968)

Law , Reality , Strong , Evil

“In a general way, the literature of the twentieth century is essentially psychological; and psychology consists of describing states of the soul by displaying them all on the same plane, without any discrimination of value, as though good and evil were external to them, as though the effort toward the good could be absent at any moment from the thought of any man.”

Simone Weil

“The responsibility of writers,” p. 168
On Science, Necessity, and the Love of God (1968)

Way , Soul , Literature , Effort

“The Hebrews took for their idol, not something made of metal or wood, but a race, a nation, something just as earthly. Their religion is essentially inseparable from such idolatry, because of the notion of the "chosen people."”

Simone Weil Letter to a Priest

Section 2
Letter to a Priest (1951)

People , Religion

“Although people seem to be unaware of it today, the development of the faculty of attention forms the real object and almost the sole interest of studies.”

Simone Weil

Waiting on God (1950), Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God

People , Study

“Rome is the Great Beast of atheism and materialism, adoring nothing but itself. Israel is the Great Beast of religion. Neither one nor the other is likable. The Great Beast is always repulsive.”

Simone Weil

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), The Great Beast (1947), p. 123; it should be noted that in this comment she is referring to the intolerant traditions of ancient Rome and ancient Isreal, and not the modern entities, one of which did not yet exist at the time of her writing.

Religion

“The soul was not made to dwell in a thing; and when forced to it, there is no part of that soul but suffers violence.”

Simone Weil

Une âme ... n'est pas faite pour habiter une chose ; quand elle y est contrainte, il n’est plus rien en elle qui ne souffre violence.
in The Simone Weil Reader, p. 155
Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), The Iliad or The Poem of Force (1940-1941)

Soul , Suffering , Parting

“Any madness in us gains from being expressed, because in this way one gives a human form to what separates us from humanity.”

Simone Weil

Source: Lectures on Philosophy (1959), p. 76

Way , Madness

“A society like the Church, which claims to be Divine is perhaps more dangerous on account of the ersatz good which it contains then on account of the evil which sullies it.
Something of the social labelled divine: an intoxicating mixture which carries with it every sort of license. Devil disguised.”

Simone Weil

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), The Great Beast (1947), p. 122

Evil

“When, as a result of what was called Enlightenment in the eighteenth century, the priests had in fact almost entirely lost this function of guidance. Their place was taken by writers and scientists. In both cases it is equally absurd. Mathematics, physics, and biology are as remote from spiritual guidance as the art of arranging words. When that function is usurped by literature and science it proves there is no longer any spiritual life.”

Simone Weil

“Morality and literature,” pp. 164-165
On Science, Necessity, and the Love of God (1968)

Life , Art , Literature , Mathematics

“The first thing that we know about ourselves is our imperfection.
This is what Descartes meant when he said: 'I know God before I know myself.'
The only mark of God in us is that we feel that we are not God.”

Simone Weil

Source: Lectures on Philosophy (1959), p. 90

God , Feeling

“The recognition of human wretchedness is difficult for whoever is rich and powerful because he is almost invincibly led to believe that he is something. It is equally difficult for the man in miserable circumstances because he is almost invincibly led to believe that the rich and powerful man is something.”

Simone Weil

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), Attention and Will (1947), p. 216

“If we want a love which will protect the soul from wounds we must love something other than God.”

Simone Weil

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), Love (1947), p. 62

Love , God , Soul

“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

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), The Great Beast (1947), p. 123

“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

La force, c'est ce qui fait de quiconque lui est soumis une chose. Quand elle s'exerce jusqu'au bout, elle fait de l'homme une chose au sens le plus littéral, car elle en fait un cadavre.
in The Simone Weil Reader, p. 153
Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), The Iliad or The Poem of Force (1940-1941)

Exercises , Sense

“Respectable scientists like de Broglie himself accept wave mechanics because it confers coherence and unity upon the experimental findings of contemporary science, and in spite of the astonishing changes it implies in connection with ideas of causality, time, and space, but it is because of these changes that it wins favor with the public. The great popular success of Einstein was the same thing. The public drinks in and swallows eagerly everything that tends to dispossess the intelligence in favor of some technique; it can hardly wait to abdicate from intelligence and reason and from everything that makes man responsible for his destiny.”

Simone Weil

“Wave Mechanics,” p. 75
On Science, Necessity, and the Love of God (1968)

Intelligence , Idea , Drink , Science

“The eulogies of my intelligence are positively intended to evade the question "Is what she says true?"”

Simone Weil

Letter to her parents (1943), as quoted in the Introduction by Siân Miles
Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), p. 2

Intelligence , Question

“If you say to someone who has ears to hear: "What you are doing to me is not just," you may touch and awaken at its source the spirit of attention and love. But it is not the same with words like, "I have the right…" or "you have no right to…" They evoke a latent war and awaken the spirit of contention.”

Simone Weil

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), Human Personality (1943), p. 63

Love , War

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

Simone Weil

Il n'est possible d'aimer et d'être juste que si l'on connaît l'empire de la force et si l'on sait ne pas le respecter.
Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), The Iliad or The Poem of Force (1940-1941), p. 192

Love , Justice

“During the last quarter of a century all the authority associated with the function of spiritual guidance … has seeped down into the lowest publications. … Between a poem by Valéry and an advertisement for a beauty cream promising a rich marriage to anyone who used it there was at no point a breach of continuity. So as a result of literature’s spiritual usurpation a beauty cream advertisement possessed, in the eyes of little village girls, the authority that was formerly attached to the words of priests.”

Simone Weil

“Morality and literature,” p. 164
On Science, Necessity, and the Love of God (1968)

Marriage , Beauty , Girl , Literature

“He who does not realize to what extent shifting fortune and necessity hold in subjection every human spirit, cannot regard as fellow-creatures nor love as he loves himself those whom chance separated from him by an abyss. The variety of constraints pressing upon man give rise to the illusion of several distinct species that cannot communicate.”

Simone Weil

Celui qui ignore à quel point la fortune variable et la nécessité tiennent toute âme humaine sous leur dépendance ne peut pas regarder comme des semblables ni aimer comme soi-même ceux que le hasard a séparés de lui par un abîme. La diversité des contraintes qui pèsent sur les hommes fait naître l'illusion qu'il y a parmi eux des espèces distinctes qui ne peuvent communiquer.
Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), The Iliad or The Poem of Force (1940-1941), p. 192

Love , Communication , Chance

“Paradoxical as it may seem, a Latin prose or a geometry problem, even though they are done wrong, may be of a great service one day, provided we devote the right kind of effort to them. Should the occasion arise, they can one day make us better able to give someone in affliction exactly the help required to save him, at the supreme moment of his need.”

Simone Weil

Waiting on God (1950), Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God

Problem , Effort , Affliction , Help

“A Pharisee is someone who is virtuous out of obedience to the Great Beast.”

Simone Weil

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), The Great Beast (1947), p. 125

“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

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), The Great Beast (1947), p. 121; footnote in Gravity and Grace edited by Gustave Thibon: To adore the "Great Beast" is to think and act in conformity with the prejudices and reactions of the multitude to the detriment of all personal search for truth and goodness.

God

“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

Du pouvoir de transformer un homme en chose en le faisant mourir procède un autre pouvoir, et bien autrement prodigieux, celui de faire une chose d'un homme qui reste vivant.
in The Simone Weil Reader, p. 155
Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), The Iliad or The Poem of Force (1940-1941)

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

Simone Weil

“The responsibility of writers,” p. 169
On Science, Necessity, and the Love of God (1968)

Evil

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

Simone Weil

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), Chance (1947), p. 277

Star , Sense , Tree

“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.”

Simone Weil

Last Notebook (1942) p. 84
First and Last Notebooks (1970)

Love , God , Pleasure

“By committing a crime, a man places himself, of his own accord, outside the chain of eternal obligations which bind every human being to every other one. Punishment alone can weld him back again; fully so, if accompanied by consent on his part; otherwise only partially so. Just as the only way of showing respect for somebody suffering from hunger is to give him something to eat, so the only way of showing respect for somebody who has placed himself outside the law is to reinstate him inside the law by subjecting him to the punishment ordained by law.
The need for punishment is not satisfied where, as is generally the case, the penal code is merely a method of exercising pressure through fear.”

Simone Weil

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), The Needs of the Soul (1949), p. 103

Hunger , Fear , Law , Way

“We should have with each person the relationship of one conception of the universe to another conception of the universe, and not to a part of the universe.”

Simone Weil book Gravity and Grace

Source: Gravity and Grace (1947), p. 129 (1972 edition)

Universe , Parting , Personality

“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

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), Attention and Will (1947), p. 216

God

“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.”

Simone Weil

As quoted in the Introduction (by Siân Miles)
Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), p. 35

Feeling , Exercises , Intelligence

“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

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), Human Personality (1943), p. 63

Girl

“The materialists say, it is by means of a series of straight lines more or less perfect that one imagines the perfect straight line as an ideal limit. That is right, but the progression in itself necessarily contains what is infinite; it is in relation to the perfect straight line that one can say that such and such a straight line is less twisted than some other. … Either one conceives the infinite or one does not conceive at all.”

Simone Weil

Source: Lectures on Philosophy (1959), p. 87

Imagination , Perfection

“We have seen that language is something precious because it allows us to express ourselves; but it is fatal when one allows oneself to be completely led astray by it, because then it prevents one from expressing oneself. Language is the source of the prejudices and haste which Descartes thought of as the sources of error.”

Simone Weil

Source: Lectures on Philosophy (1959), p. 76

Error

“Just as a vagrant accused of stealing a carrot from a field stands before a comfortably seated judge who keeps up an elegant flow of queries, comments and witticisms while the accused is unable to stammer a word, so truth stands before an intelligence which is concerned with the elegant manipulation of opinions.”

Simone Weil

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), Human Personality (1943), p. 68

Truth , Intelligence

“Meditation on the chance which led to the meeting of my mother and father is even more salutary than meditation on death.”

Simone Weil

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), Chance (1947), p. 277

Death , Chance

“I also am other than what I imagine myself to be. To know this is forgiveness.”

Simone Weil

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), Void and Compensation (1947), p. 200

Imagination , Forgiveness

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

Simone Weil book Gravity and Grace

Source: Gravity and Grace (1947), p. 159 (1972 edition)

People , Religion

“Capitalism has brought about the emancipation of collective humanity with respect to nature. But this collective humanity has itself taken on with respect to the individual the oppressive function formerly exercised by nature.”

Simone Weil book Gravity and Grace

Source: Gravity and Grace (1947), p. 140 (1972 edition)

Exercises , Nature

“We believe we are rising because while keeping the same base inclinations (for instance: the desire to triumph over others) we have given them a noble object. We should, on the contrary, rise by attaching noble inclinations to lowly objects.”

Simone Weil book Gravity and Grace

Croire qu’on s’élève parce qu’en gardant les mêmes bas penchants (exemple : désir de l’emporter sur autrui) on leur a donné des objets élevés. On s’élèverait au contraire en attachant à des objets bas des penchants élevés.
La pesanteur et la grâce (1948), p. 61
Source: Gravity and Grace (1947), p. 48 (1972 edition)