Quotes from Simone Weil

In the intellectual order, the virtue of humility is nothing more nor less than the power of attention.

To want friendship is a great fault. Friendship ought to be a gratuitous joy, like the joys afforded by art or life.

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

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.

If we go down into ourselves, we find that we possess exactly what we desire.

Nothing can have as its destination anything other than its origin. The contrary idea, the idea of progress, is poison.

Nothing is less instructive than a machine.

Education-whether its object be children or adults, individuals or an entire people-consists in creating motives.

The supernatural virtue of justice consists of behaving exactly as though there were equality when one is the stronger in an unequal relationship.

The danger is not lest the soul should doubt whether there is any bread, but lest, by a lie, it should persuade itself that it is not hungry.

Religion is a form of nourishment. It is difficult to appreciate the flavor and food-value of something one has never eaten.

Fire destroys that which feeds it.

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

To wish to escape from solitude is cowardice. Friendship is not to be sought, not to be dreamed, not to be desired; it is to be exercised (it is a virtue).

Friendship is a miracle by which a person consents to view from a certain distance, without coming any nearer, the very being who is as necessary to him as food.

The future is made of the same stuff as the present.

Death. An instantaneous state, without past or future. Indispensable for entering eternity.

The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say, What are you going through?

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