Quotes from Simone Weil

If the middle classes haven't the same need of an apocalypse, it is because long rows of figures have a poetry, a prestige which tempers in some sort the boredom associated with money; whereas, when money is counted in sixpences, we have boredom in its pure, unadulterated state. Nevertheless, that taste shown by bourgeois, both great and small, for Fascism, indicates that, in spite of everything, they too can feel bored.

Never, in any case, is any effort of true attention lost. It is always completely effective on the spiritual plane, and therefore also, in addition, on the inferior plane of the intelligence, for all spiritual light enlightens the intelligence.

When we see the world, the image we see is not only a reflection of the world, it is also a reflection of us.

Le beau est le nécessaire, qui, tout en demeurant conforme à sa loi propre et à elle seule, obéit au bien.

We should not seize upon these mysteries as truths, for that is impossible, but recognize the subordination to these mysteries which we love of all that we seize upon as truths. The intelligence can recognize this subordination by feeling that the love of these mysteries is the source of conceptions which it can seize upon as truths. Such should be the relationship between faith and love.

There isn't a man on earth who doesn't at times pronounce an opinion on good and evil, even if it be only to find fault with somebody else.

God can never be perfectly present to us here below on account of our flesh. But he can be almost perfectly absent from us in extreme affliction. This is the only possibility of perfection for us on earth. That is why the Cross is our only hope.

The institutions that regulate the public life of a country always influence the general mentality – such is the prestige of power. People have progressively developed the habit of thinking, in all domains, only in terms of being 'in favour of' or 'against' any opinion, and afterwards they seek arguments to support one of these two options. This is an exact transposition of the party spirit.

Yet what is impossible in logic becomes true in life, and the contradiction lodged within the soul tears it to shreds.

The wish to see others suffer exactly what we are suffering. It is because of this that, except in periods of social instability, the spite of those in misfortune is directed against their fellows. That is a factor making for social stability.

To love God all-powerless.

Both the destruction and the preservation of capitalism are meaningless slogans, but these slogans are supported by real organizations. Corresponding to each empty abstraction there is an actual human group, and any abstraction of which this is not true remains harmless.

Contact with the sword causes the same defilement whether it be through the hilt or the point.

A popular Spanish song says in words of marvelous truth: "If anyone wants to make himself invisible, there is no surer way than to become poor." Love sees what is invisible.

Friendship is a miracle by which a person consents to view from a certain distance, and without coming any nearer, the very being who is necessary to him as food. It requires the strength of soul that Eve did not have; and yet she had no need of the fruit. If she had been hungry at the moment she looked at the fruit, and if in spite of that she had remained looking at it indefinitely without taking one step toward it, she would have performed a miracle analogous to that of perfect friendship.

Truth lights up the soul in proportion to its purity, not in any sense to its quantity. It isn't the quantity of metal which matters, but the degree of alloy. In this respect, a little pure gold is worth a lot of pure gold. A little pure truth is worth as much as a lot of pure truth. Similarly, one perfect Greek statue contains as much beauty as two perfect Greek statues.

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

Humility consists in knowing that in what we call 'I' there is no source of energy by which we can rise. Everything, without exception, that is of value in me comes from somewhere other than myself, not as a gift, but as a loan which must be ceaselessly renewed.

God] 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.

God alone is capable of loving God. We can only consent to give up our own feelings so as to allow free passage in our soul for this love. That is the meaning of denying oneself. We are created for this consent, and for this alone.

If we apply to the present the point of that desire within us which corresponds to finality, it pierces right through to the eternal.

The true God is the God we conceive as all-powerful, but Who nevertheless does not command it where He has the power, for God is found only in the heavens or here below in secret.

Such is the power of might. Its power to transform an into a thing double and it cuts both ways; it petrifies differently but equally the souls of those who suffer it, and of those who wield it.

Such is the power of might. Its power to transform man into a thing is double and it cuts both ways; it petrifies differently but equally the souls of those who suffer it, and of those who wield it.