“Just as a blind man might find a jewel amongst heaps of rubbish, so this Spirit of Awakening has somehow arisen in me.”

§ 1.15
Bodhicaryavatara, A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life

The Unnamable (1954)
Context: What they were most determined for me to swallow was my fellow creatures. In this they were without mercy. I remember little or nothing of these lectures. I cannot have understood a great deal. But I seem to have retained certain descriptions, in spite of myself. They gave me courses on love, on intelligence, most precious, most precious. They also taught me to count, and even to reason. Some of this rubbish has come in handy on occasions, I don’t deny it, on occasions which would never have arisen if they had left me in peace. I use it still, to scratch my arse with.

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

St Cyril Road and Other Poems (2005)

Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 5e
Context: Man has to awaken to wonder — and so perhaps do peoples. Science is a way of sending him to sleep again.

Source: The Story Of The Bible, Chapter III, How The Books Of The New Testament Were Written, p. 21

The Wildest Dream: The Biography of George Mallory (2001), p. 53

Said to Molotov in 1943, as quoted in Felix Chuev's 140 Conversations with Molotov Moscow, 1991.
Contemporary witnesses

Song lyrics, The Red Shoes (1993)