Why is it that reality, when set down untransposed in a book, sounds false?
—Simone Weil
Topics: Reality
A self-respecting nation is ready for anything, including war, except for a renunciation of its option to make war.
—Simone Weil
Topics: War
A man whose mind feels that it is captive would prefer to blind himself to the fact. But if he hates falsehood, he will not do so; and in that case he will have to suffer a lot. He will beat his head against the wall until he faints. He will come to again
—Simone Weil
If we go down into ourselves, we find that we possess exactly what we desire.
—Simone Weil
Topics: Blessings, Silver Linings, Desire
The role of the intelligence—that part of us which affirms and denies and formulates opinions is merely to submit.
—Simone Weil
Topics: Intelligence
If Germany, thanks to Hitler and his successors, were to enslave the European nations and destroy most of the treasures of their past, future historians would certainly pronounce that she had civilized Europe.
—Simone Weil
Topics: Civilization
To be a hero or a heroine, one must give an order to oneself.
—Simone Weil
Topics: Heroes
Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.
—Simone Weil
Topics: Evil, Goodness
Learn to reject friendship, or rather the dream of friendship. To want friendship is a great fault. Friendship ought to be a gratuitous joy, like the joys afforded by art, or life (like aesthetic joys). I must refuse it in order to be worthy to receive it
—Simone Weil
Topics: Friendship, Friends and Friendship
Those who love a cause are those who love the life which has to be led in order to serve it.
—Simone Weil
Topics: Aptness, Appropriateness
Beauty always promises, but never gives anything.
—Simone Weil
Topics: Beauty, Promises
If we are suffering illness, poverty, or misfortune, we think we shall be satisfied on the day it ceases. But there too, we know it is false; so soon as one has got used to not suffering one wants something else.
—Simone Weil
Topics: Satisfaction
Under the name of truth I also included beauty, virtue, and every kind of goodness, so that for me it was a question of a conception of the relationship between grace and desire. The conviction that had come to me was that when one hungers for bread one does not receive stones. But at that time I had not read the Gospel.
Just as I was certain that desire has in itself an efficacy in the realm of spiritual goodness whatever its form, I thought it was also possible that it might not be effective in any other realm.
—Simone Weil
Topics: Goodness
We are like horses who hurt themselves as soon as they pull on their bits—and we bow our heads. We even lose consciousness of the situation, we just submit. Any re-awakening of thought is then painful.
—Simone Weil
Topics: Slavery
I suffer more from the humiliations inflicted by my country than from those inflicted on her.
—Simone Weil
Topics: Nations, Nationalism, Nationality, Nation
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.
—Simone Weil
Topics: Humanity
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.
—Simone Weil
Topics: Reality
The most important part of teaching is to teach what it is to know.
—Simone Weil
Topics: Teaching, Education, Part of The Whole
The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like the condemned man who is proud of his large cell
—Simone Weil
Topics: Intelligence
Evil being the root of mystery, pain is the root of knowledge.
—Simone Weil
Topics: Difficulties, Pain, Adversity
In the Church, considered as a social organism, the mysteries inevitably degenerate into beliefs.
—Simone Weil
Topics: Churches, Religion
When a contradiction is impossible to resolve except by a lie, then we know that it is really a door.
—Simone Weil
Topics: Problems
Real genius is nothing else but the supernatural virtue of humility in the domain of thought.
—Simone Weil
Topics: Genius
Imagination and fiction make up more than three-quarters of our real life.
—Simone Weil
Topics: Imagination
In solitude we are in the presence of mere matter (even the sky, the stars, the moon, trees in blossom), things of less value (perhaps) than a human spirit. Its value lies in the greater possibility of attention.
—Simone Weil
Topics: Solitude
Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be attained only by someone who is detached.
—Simone Weil
Topics: Attachment
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.
—Simone Weil
Topics: Friendship, Friends
Do not allow yourself to be imprisoned by any affection. Keep your solitude. The day, if it ever comes, when you are given true affection there will be no opposition between interior solitude and friendship, quite the reverse. It is even by this infallible sign that you will recognize it.
—Simone Weil
Topics: Friendship
Culture is an instrument wielded by teachers to manufacture teachers, who, in their turn, will manufacture still more teachers.
—Simone Weil
Topics: Culture
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.
—Simone Weil
Topics: God
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Albert Camus Algerian-born French Philosopher
- Jean-Paul Sartre French Philosopher
- Henri Bergson French Philosopher
- Jacques Derrida French Philosopher, Literary Theorist
- Pierre-Joseph Proudhon French Philosopher
- Emma Goldman American Anarchist
- Michel Foucault French Philosopher
- Guy Debord French Philosopher
- George Steiner American Culture Critic
- Claude Levi-Strauss French Anthropologist
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