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Simone Weil QUOTES

Simone Weil QUOTES

1 " All the natural movements of the soul are controlled by laws analogous to those of physical gravity. Grace is the only exception. Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes this void. The imagination is continually at work filling up all the fissures through which grace might pass. "

― Simone Weil , Gravity and Grace

2 " At the very best, a mind enclosed in language is in prison. It is limited to the number of relations which words can make simultaneously present to it; and remains in ignorance of thoughts which involve the combination of a greater number. These thoughts are outside language, they are unformulable, although they are perfectly rigorous and clear and although every one of the relations they involve is capable of precise expression in words. So the mind moves in a closed space of partial truth, which may be larger or smaller, without ever being able so much as to glance at what is outside. "

― Simone Weil

3 " We have to endure the discordance between imagination and fact. It is better to say, “I am suffering,” than to say, “This landscape is ugly. "

― Simone Weil

4 " There are two atheisms of which one is a purification of the notion of God. "

― Simone Weil

5 " We have to believe in a God who is like the true God in everything except that he does not exist, since we have not reached the point where God exists. "

― Simone Weil

6 " He who has not God in himself cannot feel His absence. "

― Simone Weil , Gravity and Grace

7 " When I think of the Crucifixion, I commit the sin of envy. "

― Simone Weil , Waiting for God

8 " Belief in immortality is harmful because it is not in our power to conceive of the soul as really incorporeal. So this belief is in fact a belief in the prolongation of life, and it robs death of its purpose. "

― Simone Weil , Gravity and Grace

9 " To love purely is to consent to distance, it is to adore the distance between ourselves and that which we love. "

― Simone Weil , Gravity and Grace

10 " Friendship is not to be sought, not to be dreamed, not to be desired; it is to be exercised (it is a virtue). "

― Simone Weil , Gravity and Grace

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

― Simone Weil

12 " Herein is a capital truth. It is not the natural capacity, the congenital gift, nor is it the effort, the will, the work, which in the intelligence as sway over the energy capable of making it fully efficacious. It is uniquely the desire, that is, the desire for beauty. This desire, given a certain degree of intensity and purity, is the same thing as genius. At all levels it is the same thing as attention. If this were understood, the whole conception of teaching would be quite other than it is. First, one would realize that the intelligence functions only in joy. Intelligence is perhaps even the only one of our faculties to which joy is indispensible. The absence of joy asphyxiates it. "

― Simone Weil

13 " Affliction compels us to recognize as real what we do not think possible. "

― Simone Weil

14 " 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

15 " The joy of learning is as indispensable in study as breathing is in running. Where it is lacking there are no real students, but only poor caricatures of apprentices who, at the end of their apprenticeship, will not even have a trade. "

― Simone Weil

16 " Education -- whether its object be children or adults, individuals or an entire people, or even oneself -- consists in creating motives. To show what is beneficial, what is obligatory, what is good -- that is the task of education. Education concerns itself with the motives for effective action. For no action is ever carried out in the absence of motives capable of supplying the indispensable amount of energy for its execution. "

― Simone Weil

17 " A beautiful woman looking at her image in the mirror may very well believe the image is herself. An ugly woman knows it is not. "

― Simone Weil , Waiting for God

18 " Love is not consolation. It is light. "

― Simone Weil

19 " It is impossible to forgive whoever has done us harm if that harm has lowered us. We have to think that it has not lowered us, but has revealed our true level. "

― Simone Weil , Gravity and Grace

20 " God created through love and for love. God did not create anything except love itself, and the means to love. He created love in all its forms. He created beings capable of love from all possible distances. Because no other could do it, he himself went to the greatest possible distance, the infinite distance. This infinite distance between God and God, this supreme tearing apart, this agony beyond all others, this marvel of love, is the crucifixion. Nothing can be further from God than that which has been made accursed. "

― Simone Weil , Waiting for God