Simone Weil Quotes

Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. – Simone Weil

Imagination and fiction make up more than three-quarters of our lives. – Simone Weil

To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul. – Simone Weil

What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step. – Simone Weil

A religious life is simply a life in which all our acts are done for God. – Simone Weil

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

Obedience is the virtue of recognizing the necessity of order. – Simone Weil

Attention is the natural prayer of the soul. – Simone Weil

He who has not God in himself cannot feel His absence. – Simone Weil

The world is always almost dying of boredom. – Simone Weil

The mysteries of faith are degraded if they are made into an object of affirmation and negation, when, in reality, they should be an object of contemplation. – Simone Weil

Two prisoners whose cells adjoin communicate with each other by knocking on the wall. The wall is the thing which separates them but is also their means of communication. It is the same with us and God. Every separation is a link. – Simone Weil

To be free from enslavement to the opinions of others is to be free from the opinions themselves. – Simone Weil

There is only one thing which we can safely expect to be still before us in a few years: death. – Simone Weil

Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it is the person crushed who feels what is happening. Unless one has placed oneself on the side of the oppressed, to feel with them, one cannot understand. – Simone Weil

No pressure, no diamonds. – Simone Weil

Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. – Simone Weil

Imagination is always the fabric of social life and the dynamic of history. The influence of real needs and compulsions, of real interests and materials, is indirect because the crowd is never conscious of it. – Simone Weil

We must prefer real hell to an imaginary paradise. – Simone Weil

One does not always stay intact. – Simone Weil

All sins are attempts to fill voids. – Simone Weil

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

Courage is not having the strength to go on; it is going on when you don’t have the strength. – Simone Weil

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

Gravity is the root of grace. – Simone Weil

Religion in its purity is nothing other than a vast love for all beings. – Simone Weil

There is something in every one of you that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself. It is the only true guide you will ever have. – Simone Weil

Love is not consolation, it is light. – Simone Weil

The need to be right is the sign of a vulgar mind. – Simone Weil

A hurtful act is the transference to others of the degradation which we bear in ourselves. – Simone Weil

We have to get off the merry-go-round of illusion. – Simone Weil

Nothing is so beautiful as a hole. A hole is the absence of matter but it is not nothing. It is a figure. – Simone Weil

To be a witness does not consist in engaging in propaganda, nor even in stirring people up, but in being a living mystery. It means to live in such a way that one’s life would not make sense if God did not exist. – Simone Weil

True love is not an endless act of indulgence but a gentle, selfless act of withdrawal. – Simone Weil

When we are aware of our faults, we usually forget about our merits. – Simone Weil

Sophistication does not make one happy. – Simone Weil

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

A love that does not make unjust demands upon a person is not worthy of the name. – Simone Weil

To be a hero or a madman, you must first understand the difference. – Simone Weil

The only intelligent tactical response to life’s horror is to laugh defiantly at it. – Simone Weil

All the natural movements of the soul are controlled by laws analogous to those of physical gravity. – Simone Weil

To make something beautiful is to bring a form out of non-form. – Simone Weil

Magic is the science of the future. – Simone Weil

To love a person is to see all of their magic, and to remind them of it when they have forgotten. – Simone Weil

Feeling pure love and compassion for every living creature is the true sign of enlightenment. – Simone Weil