100 Simone Weil Quotes From The French Philosopher And Activist
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Simone Weil was a mystic and philosopher who lived a short life in France.
The sister of mathematician Andre Weil, this genius philosopher was admired by all her contemporaries. Her personality was something that attracted the attention of everyone.
Being a philosopher, Simone Weil had many works that are still relevant today and make for a great read. Some of her most famous works include 'Gravity & Grace', 'The Need For Roots' and 'Waiting For God' and were all published posthumously as Simone Weil lived till the age of 34 and died from tuberculosis in 1943.
But, she had left behind a rich body of work from which we hope you like some of the Simone Weil quotes.
For more quotes, read activism quotes and Spinoza quotes.
Philosophical Quotes By Simone Weil
The philosopher in Simone Weil is expressed in these quotes. You will also find Simone Weil quotes on love here.
1. "Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity."
- Simone Weil.
2. "To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul. "
- Simone Weil.
3. "'Science affirms that ...' Science is voiceless; it is the scientists who talk.
- Simone Weil, 'On Science, Necessity, And The Love Of God'.
4. "Unless one has placed oneself on the side of the oppressed, to feel with them, one cannot understand."
- Simone Weil.
5. "There is something else which has the power to awaken us to the truth. It is the works of writers of genius."
- Simone Weil.
6. "From the power to transform him into a thing by killing him there proceeds another power, and much more prodigious, that which makes a thing of him while he still lives."
- Simone Weil.
7. "The human soul has need of some solitude and privacy and also of some social life."
- Simone Weil.
8. "Pain and suffering are a kind of currency passed from hand to hand until they reach someone who receives them but does not pass them on."
- Simone Weil.
9. "Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating."
- Simone Weil.
10. "Everything beautiful has a mark of eternity."
- Simone Weil.
11. "God's love for us is not the reason for which we should love him. God's love for us is the reason for us to love ourselves."
- Simone Weil.
12. "Concern for the symbol has completely disappeared from our science."
- Simone Weil.
13. "True definition of science: the study of the beauty of the world."
- Simone Weil.
14. "Humility is attentive patience."
- Simone Weil.
15. "The world is the closed door. It is a barrier. And at the same time it is the way through."
- Simone Weil.
16. "Whenever one tries to suppress doubt, there is tyranny."
- Simone Weil.
17. "A mind enclosed in language is in prison."
- Simone Weil.
18. "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."
- Simone Weil
19. "The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like the condemned man who is proud of his large cell."
- Simone Weil.
20. "The most important part of teaching is to teach what it is to know."
- Simone Weil.
21. "From modern thought to ancient wisdom the path would be short and direct, if one cared to take it."
- Simone Weil.
22. "The prospects of revolution seem therefore quite restricted. For can a revolution avoid war?"
- Simone Weil.
23. "The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say, 'What are you going through?'"
- Simone Weil.
24. "Imagination and fiction make up more than three-quarters of our real life."
- Simone Weil.
25. "We have to endure the discordance between imagination and fact."
- Simone Weil.
26. "The proper method of philosophy consists in clearly conceiving the insoluble problems in all their insolubility and then in simply contemplating them, fixedly and tirelessly, year after year, without any hope, patiently waiting."
- Simone Weil.
27. "Love is not consolation. It is light."
- Simone Weil.
28. "Art is the symbol of the two noblest human efforts: to construct and to refrain from destruction."
- Simone Weil.
29. "We must not wish for the disappearance of our troubles but for the grace to transform them."
- Simone Weil.
30. "It is the aim of public life to arrange that all forms of power are entrusted, so far as possible, to men who effectively consent to be bound by the obligation towards all human beings which lies upon everyone, and who understand the obligation."
- Simone Weil.
Mystic Simone Weil Quotes
These are some mystical Simone Weil quotes.
31. "One of the most exquisite pleasures of human love - to serve the loved one without his knowing it - is only possible, as regards the love of God, through atheism."
- Simone Weil.
32. "Therefore prestige, which is illusion, is of the very essence of power."
- Simone Weil.
33. "There are two atheisms of which one is a purification of the notion of God."
- Simone Weil.
34. "It is not religion but revolution which is the opium of the people."
- Simone Weil.
35. "I can, therefore I am."
- Simone Weil.
36. "If we go down into ourselves, we find that we possess exactly what we desire."
- Simone Weil.
37. "All sins are attempts to fill voids."
- Simone Weil.
38. "Compassion directed toward oneself is true humility."
- Simone Weil.
39. "Wrongly or rightly you think that I have a right to the name of Christian."
- Simone Weil.
40. "Fortunately the sky is beautiful everywhere."
- Simone Weil.
41. "There is a reality outside the world, that is to say, outside space and time, outside man's mental universe, outside any sphere whatsoever that is accessible to human faculties."
- Simone Weil.
42. "The needs of the soul can for the most part be listed in pairs of opposites which balance and complete one another."
- Simone Weil.
43. "If a captive mind is unaware of being in prison, it is living in error."
- Simone Weil
44. "Evil, when we are in its power, is not felt as evil but as a necessity, or even a duty."
- Simone Weil.
45. "The world is God's language to us."
- Simone Weil.
Best Simone Weil Quotes From The Great Philosopher
Scroll down for some of the best Simone Weil quotes. These Simone Weil quotes will make you think!
46. "If you want to know what a man is really like, take notice of how he acts when he loses money."
- Simone Weil.
47. "It is because of my wretchedness that I am 'I.'"
- Simone Weil.
48. "Official history is a matter of believing murderers on their own word."
- Simone Weil.
49. "You could not be born at a better period than the present when we have lost everything."
- Simone Weil.
50. "An imaginary divinity has been given to man so that he may strip himself of it."
- Simone Weil.
51. "I also am other than what I imagine myself to be. To know this is forgiveness."
- Simone Weil.
52. "To be always relevant, you have to say things which are eternal."
- Simone Weil.
53. "The destruction of the past is perhaps the greatest of all crimes."
- Simone Weil
54. "Truth is sought not because it is truth but because it is good."
- Simone Weil.
55. "A hurtful act is the transference to others of the degradation which we bear in ourselves."
- Simone Weil.
56. "The state of conformity is an imitation of grace."
- Simone Weil.
57. "One cannot imagine St. Francis of Assisi talking about rights."
- Simone Weil.
58. "Liberty, taking the word in its concrete sense, consists in the ability to choose."
- Simone Weil.
59. "The future is made of the same stuff as the present."
- Simone Weil.
60. "It is a fault to wish to be understood before we have made ourselves clear to ourselves."
- Simone Weil.
Simone Weil Quotes From 'Waiting For God'
Here are some quotes from Simone Weil's celebrated book.
61. "A beautiful woman looking at her image in the mirror may very well believe the image is herself. An ugly woman knows it is not."
- Simone Weil, 'Waiting For God'.
62. "The capacity to give one's attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing; it is almost a miracle; it is a miracle."
- Simone Weil, 'Waiting For God'.
63. "We cannot take a step toward the heavens. God crosses the universe and comes to us."
- Simone Weil, 'Waiting For God'.
64. "We do not obtain the most precious gifts by going in search of them but by waiting for them."
- Simone Weil, 'Waiting For God'.
65. "God did not create anything except love itself, and the means to love."
- Simone Weil, 'Waiting For God'.
66. "Above all our thought should be empty, waiting, not seeking anything, but ready to receive in its naked truth the object that is to penetrate it."
- Simone Weil, 'Waiting For God'.
67. "The beauty of the world is the mouth of a labyrinth."
- Simone Weil, 'Waiting For God'.
68. "Humility consists of knowing that in this world the whole soul, not only what we term the ego in its totality, but also the supernatural part of the soul, which is God present in it, is subject to time and to the vicissitudes of change."
- Simone Weil, 'Waiting For God'.
69. "The sea is not less beautiful in our eyes because we know that sometimes ships are wrecked by it."
- Simone Weil, 'Waiting For God'.
70. "The most important part of education — to teach the meaning of to know (in the scientific sense)."
- Simone Weil, 'Waiting For God'.
Great Simone Weil 'Gravity And Grace' Quotes
Take a look at these quotes from the book that shaped Simon Weil's legacy as a philosopher and mystic.
71. "Love of God is pure when joy and suffering inspire an equal degree of gratitude."
- Simone Weil, 'Gravity And Grace'.
72. "God gives himself to men either as powerful or as perfect—it is for them to choose."
- Simone Weil, 'Gravity And Grace'.
73."Action is the pointer which shows the balance. We must not touch the pointer but the weight."
- Simone Weil, 'Gravity And Grace'.
74. "The light of attention... is not compatible with polemical intention."
- Simone Weil, 'Gravity And Grace'.
75. "He who is above social life returns to it when he wishes, not so he who is below."
- Simone Weil, 'Gravity And Grace'.
76. "Human misery would be intolerable if it were not diluted in time."
- Simone Weil, 'Gravity And Grace'.
77. "The beautiful is that which we cannot wish to change."
- Simone Weil, 'Gravity And Grace'.
78. "The presence of the dead person is imaginary, but his absence is very real: henceforward it is his way of appearing."
- Simone Weil, 'Gravity And Grace'.
79. "Distance is the soul of the beautiful."
- Simone Weil, 'Gravity And Grace'.
80. "The false God changes suffering into violence. The true God changes violence into suffering."
- Simone Weil, 'Gravity And Grace'.
81. "Attachment is a manufacturer of illusions and whoever wants reality ought to be detached."
- Simone Weil, 'Gravity And Grace'.
82. "There is nothing nearer to true humility than the intelligence. It is impossible to be proud of our intelligence at the moment when we are really exercising it."
- Simone Weil, 'Gravity And Grace'.
83. "It is the social which throws the color of the absolute over the relative."
- Simone Weil, 'Gravity And Grace'.
84. "He who has not God in himself cannot feel His absence."
- Simone Weil, 'Gravity And Grace'.
85. "Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer."
- Simone Weil, 'Gravity And Grace'.
86. "The simultaneous existence of opposite virtues in the soul—like pincers to catch hold of God."
- Simone Weil, 'Gravity And Grace'.
87. "It is impossible to forgive whoever has done us harm if that harm has lowered us. We have to think that it has not lowered us, but has revealed our true level."
- Simone Weil, 'Gravity And Grace'.
88. "Alexander is to a peasant proprietor what Don Juan is to a happily married husband."
- Simone Weil, 'Gravity And Grace'.
89. "Human existence is so fragile a thing and exposed to such dangers that I cannot love without trembling."
- Simone Weil, 'Gravity And Grace'.
90. "Every order which transcends another can only be introduced into it under the form of something infinitely small."
- Simone Weil, 'Gravity And Grace'.
Famous Quotes On Simone Weil
These are some quotes about Simone Weil from her contemporaries and critics.
91. "Simone Weil, I maintain this now, is the only great spirit of our times and I hope that those who realize this have enough modesty to not try to appropriate her overwhelming witnessing."
- Albert Camus.
92. "In the last resort, it is in the name of religious universalism that Simone Weil calls for a reversion of historical Christianity to its origins as a religion of kenosis."
- J. Edgar Bauer.
93. "The reader of her work finds himself confronted by a difficult, violent and complex personality..."
- T. S. Eliot.
94. "Simone Weil was one of the most remarkable women of the twentieth, or indeed of any other century."
- Kenneth Rexroth.
95. "Light for the spirit and nourishment for the soul, Simone Weil’s work does not have to be brought 'up to date,' since it emanates from that summit of being which overhangs all times and places."
- Gustave Thibon.
96. "Camus and Simone Weil provide different routes to individual authenticity and integrity in an absurd world."
- Fred Rosen.
97. "Her life is almost a perfect blending of the Comic and the Terrible, which two things may be opposite sides of the same coin."
- Flannery O'Connor.
98. "We must simply expose ourselves to the personality of a woman of genius, of a kind of genius akin to that of the saints."
- T. S. Eliot.
99. "In the last years of her life she worried that all beliefs, even religious ones, risk idolatry."
- Robert Coles.
100. "In her relatively short life, Simone Weil … created a body of work whose intellectual scope and acuity are remindful of religious thinkers such as Blaise Pascal or Søren Kierkegaard."
- J. Edgar Bauer.
Here at Kidadl, we have carefully created lots of interesting family-friendly quotes for everyone to enjoy! If you liked our suggestions for Simone Weil quotes then why not take a look at Will Durant quotes, or women's history month quotes.
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Bachelor of Arts specializing in Journalism and Mass Communication, Postgraduate Diploma in Sports Management
Moumita DuttaBachelor of Arts specializing in Journalism and Mass Communication, Postgraduate Diploma in Sports Management
A content writer and editor with a passion for sports, Moumita has honed her skills in producing compelling match reports and stories about sporting heroes. She holds a degree in Journalism and Mass Communication from the Indian Institute of Social Welfare and Business Management, Calcutta University, alongside a postgraduate diploma in Sports Management.
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