Simone Weil Quotes

Beauty always promises, but never gives anything.

Simone Weil

Humanism was not wrong in thinking that truth, beauty, liberty, and equality are of infinite value, but in thinking that man can get them for himself without grace.

Simone Weil

It is an eternal obligation toward the human being not to let him suffer from hunger when one has a chance of coming to his assistance.

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 want friendship is a great fault. Friendship ought to be a gratuitous joy, like the joys afforded by art or life.

Simone Weil

The future is made of the same stuff as the present.

Simone Weil

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.

Simone Weil

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

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

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

Simone Weil

Evil being the root of mystery, pain is the root of knowledge.

Simone Weil

I can, therefore I am.

Simone Weil

Humility is attentive patience.

Simone Weil

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

Simone Weil

Equality is the public recognition, effectively expressed in institutions and manners, of the principle that an equal degree of attention is due to the needs of all human beings.

Simone Weil