Quotes from Simone Weil

Minä on vain synnin ja erehdyksen luoma varjo; synti ja erehdys pysähdyttävät Jumalasta säteilevän valon. Ja tätä varjoa minä luulen olennoksi. Vaikka voisikin olla Jumalan kaltainen, olisi sittenkin parempi olla liejua, joka tottelee Jumalaa.

Human beings have roots by virtue of their real, active, and natural participation in the life of a community which preserves in living shape particular treasures of the past and particular expectations for the future.

Attachment is a manufacturer of illusions and whoever wants reality ought to be detached.

Une uniformité qui imite les mouvements des horloges et non pas ceux des constellations, une variété qui exclut toute règle et par suite toute prévision, cela fait un temps inhabitable à l'homme, irrespirable.

Fashion exerts more power in science than it does on the shape of hats.

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

I still think today, that one can never wrestle enough with God if one does so out of pure regard for the truth. Christ likes us to prefer truth to him because, before being Christ, he is truth. If one turns aside from him to go toward the truth, one will not go far before falling into his arms. (from Waiting for God, 2009 edition page 27)

I have never caused anyone to weep. I have never spoken with a haughty voice. I have never made anyone afraid. I have never been deaf to words of justice and truth.

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.

But nothing of all that the peoples of Europe have produced is worth the first known poem to have appeared among them. Perhaps they will rediscover that epic genius when they learn how to accept the fact that nothing is sheltered from fate, how never to admire might, or hate the enemy, or to despise sufferers. It is doubtful if this will happen soon.

Love on the part of someone who is happy is the wish to share the suffering of the beloved who is unhappy. Love on the part of someone who is unhappy is to be filled with joy by the mere knowledge that his beloved is happy without sharing in this happiness or even wishing to do so.

Dieu n'a pu créer qu'en se cachant. Autrement il n'y aurait que lui.

The Gospels: God's perfection consists in non-intervention.

Let us love this distance which is thoroughly woven with friendship, since those who do not love each other are not separated

For the action of grace in our hearts is secret and silent.

Renoncer à tout ce qui n'est pas la grâce et ne pas désirer la grâce.

Supplier un homme, c'est une tentative désespérée pour faire passer à force d'intensité son propre système de valeurs dans l'esprit d'un autre. Supplier Dieu, c'est le contraire : tentative pour faire passer les valeurs divines dans sa propre âme.

On God's part creation is not an act of self-expansion but of restraint and renunciation.

L'intelligence n'a rien à trouver, elle a à déblayer. Elle n'est bonne qu'aux tâches serviles.

For the soldier death is the future, the future his profession assigns him. Yet the idea of man's having death for a future is abhorrent to nature. Once the experience of war makes visible the possibility of death that lies locked up in each moment, our thoughts cannot travel from one day to the next without meeting death's face.

Those who are unhappy have no need for anything in this world but people capable of giving them their attention.

An atheist may be simply one whose faith and love are concentrated on the impersonal aspects of God.

In every kind of human occupation there is always some regard for the beauty of the world seen in more or less distorted or soiled images. As a consequence there is not any department of human life which is purely natural. The supernatural is secretly present throughout. Under a thousand different forms, grace and mortal sin are everywhere.

What we love is perfect joy itself. When we know this, even hope becomes useless; it no longer makes sense. The only thing that remains to hope for is the grace not to disobey here below. The rest is God's affair alone and not our concern.