Quotes from Simone Weil

Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.

Attentiveness is the heart of prayer.

Prayer consists simply in giving to God all the careful attention of which the soul is capable.

The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like the condemned man who is proud of his large cell.

Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.

It is only the impossible that is possible for God. He has given over the possible to the mechanics of matter and the autonomy of his creatures.

Evil, when we are in its power, is not felt as evil, but as a necessity, even a duty.

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.

One cannot imagine St. Francis of Assisi talking about rights.

Religion as a source of consolation is an obstacle to true faith.

It is not religion but revolution which is the opium of the people.

To be always relevant, you have to say things which are eternal.

Workers need poetry more than bread. They need that their life should be a poem. They need some light from eternity. Religion alone can be the source of such poetry.

The joy of learning is as indispensable in study as breathing is in running.

Science is voiceless; it is the scientists who talk.

True definition of science: the study of the beauty of the world.

The villagers seldom leave the village; many scientists have limited and poorly cultivated minds apart from their specialty.

The beauty of the world is Christ's tender smile for us coming through matter.

Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life.

Every perfect life is a parable invented by God.

Petroleum is a more likely cause of international conflict than wheat.

A mind enclosed in language is in prison.

Difficult as it is really to listen to someone in affliction, it is just as difficult for him to know that compassion is listening to him.

Uprooting is by far the most dangerous of the ills of human society, for it perpetuates itself.