Simone Weil

“When I think of the Crucifixion, I commit the sin of envy.”

“He who has not God in himself cannot feel His absence.”

“In struggling against anguish one never produces serenity; the struggle against anguish only produces new forms of anguish. ”

“Compassion directed toward oneself is true humility.”

“Electra weeping for the dead Orestes. If we love God while thinking that he does not exist, he will manifest his existence.”

“To be a hero or a heroine, one must give an order to oneself.”

“There is something else which has the power to awaken us to the truth. It is the works of writers of genius. They give us, in the guise of fiction, something equivalent to the actual density of the real, that density which life offers us every day but which we are unable to grasp because we are amusing ourselves with lies.”

“One can never really give a proof of the reality of anything; reality is not something open to proof, it is something established. It is established just because proof is not enough. It is this characteristic of language, at once indispensable and inadequate, which shows the reality of the external world. Most people hardly ever realize this, because it is rare that the very same man thinks and puts his thought into action.”

“The contemporary form of true greatness lies in a civilization founded on the spirituality of work.”

“Two forces rule the universe: light and gravity.”

“It seemed to me certain, and I still think so 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. ”

“The most important part of teaching is to teach what it is to know. ”

“The poison of skepticism becomes, like alcoholism, tuberculosis, and some other diseases, much more virulent in a hitherto virgin soil.”

“A science which does not bring us nearer to God is worthless. ”

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

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

“The destruction of the past is perhaps the greatest of all crimes. ”

“Those who love a cause are those who love the life which has to be led in order to serve it. ”

“Whatever debases the intelligence degrades the entire human being.”

“Humility is attentive patience.”

“If Germany, thanks to Hitler and his successors, were to enslave the European nations and destroy most of the treasures of their past, future historians would certainly pronounce that she had civilized Europe.”

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

“Culture is an instrument wielded by professors to manufacture professors who when their time comes, will manufacture professors. ”

“Art is the symbol of the two noblest human efforts: to construct and to refrain from destruction.”

“Everything beautiful has a mark of eternity.”

“To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.”

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

“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 sigh that you will recognize it.”

“Affliction hardens and discourages us because, like a red hot iron, it stamps the soul to its very depths with the scorn, the disgust, and even the self-hatred and sense of guilt that crime logically should produce but actually does not.”

“To claim that theft or adultery or lying are "evil" simply reflects our degraded idea of good-—that it has something to do with respect for property, respectability, and sincerity. ”

“Human existence is so fragile a thing and exposed to such dangers that I cannot love without trembling.”

“All sins are attempts to fill voids.”

“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.”

“Even if our efforts of attention seem for years to be producing no result, one day a light that is in exact proportion to them will flood the soul.”

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

“Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.”