Quotes by Simone Weil

The sum of the particular intentions of God is the universe itself.

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.

All sins are attempts to fill voids.

If we know in what way society is unbalanced, we must do what we can to add weight to the lighter scale ... we must have formed a conception of equilibrium and be ever ready to change sides like justice, that fugitive from the camp of conquerors.

One must always be prepared to switch sides with justice, that fugitive of the winning camp.

It is to the prodigals...that the memory of their Fathers house comes back. If the son had lived economically he would never have thought of returning.

Liberty, taking the word in its concrete sense, consists in the ability to choose.

Whether the mask is labeled fascism, democracy, or dictatorship of the proletariat, our great adversary remains the apparatus—the bureaucracy, the police, the military. Not the one facing us across the frontier of the battle lines, which is not so much our enemy as our brothers enemy, but the one that calls itself our protector and makes us its slaves. No matter what the circumstances, the worst betrayal will always be to subordinate ourselves to this apparatus and to trample underfoot, in its service, all human values in ourselves and in others.

God can never be perfectly present to us here below on account of our flesh. But he can be almost perfectly absent from us in extreme affliction. This is the only possibility of perfection for us on earth. That is why the Cross is our only hope.

It is because the will has no power to bring about salvation that the idea of secular morality is an absurdity. What is called morality only depends on the will in what is, so to speak, its most muscular aspect. Religion on the contrary corresponds to desire, and it is desire that saves...To long for God and to renounce all the rest, that alone can save.

Fashion exerts more power in science than it does on the shape of hats.

There isnt a man on earth who doesnt at times pronounce an opinion on good and evil, even if it be only to find fault with somebody else.

Why is the determination to fight against a prejudice a sure sign that one is full of it? Such a determination necessarily arises from an obsession. It constitutes an utterly sterile effort to get rid of it. In such a case the light of attention is the only thing which is effective, and it is not compatible with a polemical intention.

Pain is the root of knowledge.

A work of art has an author and yet when it is perfect it has something which is anonymous about it.

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

Those who serve a cause are not those who love that cause. They are those who love the life which has to be led in order to serve it - except in the case of the very purest and they are rare.

Grace fills empty spaces but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it and it is grace itself which makes this void.

Fire destroys that which feeds it.

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