Quotes from Simone Weil

Always do what will cost you the most.

To see a landscape as it is when I am not there... When I am in any place, I disturb the silence of heaven and earth by my breathing and the beating of my heart.

Suffering: superiority of man over God. The Incarnation was necessary so that this superiority should not be scandalous.

The secret of the human condition is that there is no equilibrium between man and the surrounding forces of nature, which infinitely exceed him when in inaction; there is only equilibrium in action by which man recreates his own life through work.

When water is set in motion by a violent, impetuous current, it ceases to reflect images. Its surface is no longer level; it can no more measure densities. Whether it is moved by a single current or by several conflicting ones, the disturbance is the same.

Le temps, par son cours, use et détruit ce qui est temporel. Aussi y-a-t-il plus d'éternité dans le passé que dans le présent. Valeur de l'histoire bien comprise analogue à celle du souvenir dans Proust. Ainsi le passé nous présente quelque chose qui est à la fois réel et meilleur que nous, et qui peut nous tirer ver le haut, ce que l'avenir ne fait jamais.

All mediocrity flies from the light.

L'obéissance à un homme dont l'autorité n'est pas illuminée de légitimité, c'est un cauchemar

But a better remedy is indifference to ourselves, and being happy because the good is good, although we are far from it and may even suppose that we are destined to remain separated from it forever.

A gyilkosság bosszú azért, hogy halandók vagyunk.

Desire is impossible: it destroys its object. Lovers cannot be one, nor can Narcissus be two. Don Juan, Narcissus. Because to desire something is impossible, we have to desire what is nothing

Ori de câte ori m? gândesc la crucificarea lui Hristos, s?vâÅŸesc p?catul invidiei.

The fact of dying for what is strong robs death of its bitterness—and at the same time of all its value.

If three steps are taken without any other motive than the desire to obey God, those three steps are miraculous; they are equally so whether they take place on dry land or on water.

El hecho consumado persuade más que todos los razonamientos; es por eso que no hay nada como la acción directa para arrancar conquistas.

The contemporary form of true greatness lies in a civilization founded on the spirituality of work.

Physical labour is a daily death

You could not have wished to be born at a better time than this, when everything is lost.

Nöyryys on samaa kuin tieto, ettei siinä mitä sanotaan minäksi ole lainkaan sellaista energiaa, jonka avulla pääsisimme kohoamaan. Kaikki mitä minussa on arvokasta, on poikkeuksetta peräisin muualta; eikä se ole lahjaa vaa lainaa, joka on alituisesti uudistettava. Kaikki mitä minussa itsessäni on, on poikkeuksetta arvotonta; ja jos anastan omakseni muualta saamiani lahjoja, nekin heti muuttuvat arvottomiksi.

You have provided me with a source of the most compelling and pure inspiration that is to be found among human things, for nothing… has such power to keep our gaze fixed ever more intensely upon god, than friendship for the friends of god.

Toda la publicidad, toda la propaganda, tan variada en sus formas, que busca excitar el deseo de lo superfluo, tanto en el campo como entre los obreros, debe ser considerada un crimen.

Thus it happens that those who have force on loan from fate count on it too much and are destroyed.

With no matter what human being, taken individually, I always find reasons for concluding that sorrow and misfortune do not suit him; either because he seems too mediocre for anything so great, or, on the contrary, too precious to be destroyed.

L'esprit de verite peut resider dans la science a la condition que le mobile du savant soit l'amour de l'objet qui est la matiere de son etude... La vraie definition de la science, c'est qu'elle est l'etude de la beaute du monde