Simone Weil (/veɪ/; French: [simɔn vɛj] ( listen); 3 February 1909 – 24 August 1943) was a French philosopher, mystic, and political activist.
Electra weeping for the dead Orestes. If we love God while thinking that he does not exist, he will manifest his existence.
To die for God is not a proof of faith in God. To die for an unknown and repulsive convict who is a victim of injustice, that is a proof of faith in God.
Modern life is given over to immoderation. Immoderation invades everything: actions and thought, public and private life.
As soon as men know that they can kill without fear of punishment or blame, they kill; or at least they encourage killers with approving smiles.
Fire destroys that which feeds it.
Just as the power of the sun is the only force in the natural universe that causes a plant to grow against gravity, so the grace of God is the only force in the spiritual universe that causes a person to grow against the gravity of their own ego.
Everything without exception which is of value in me comes from somewhere other than myself, not as a gift but as a loan which must be ceaselessly renewed.
What is surprising is not that oppression should make its appearance only after higher forms of economy have been reached, but that it should always accompany them.
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.
We possess nothing in the world - a mere chance can strip us of everything - except the power to say 'I.
The vulnerability of precious things is beautiful because vulnerability is a mark of existence. The destruction of Troy. The fall of the petals from fruit trees in blossom. To know that what is most precious is not rooted in existence - that is beautiful.
If there were no affliction in this world we might think we were in paradise.
The poison of skepticism becomes, like alcoholism, tuberculosis, and some other diseases, much more virulent in a hitherto virgin soil.
Friendship is a miracle by which a person consents to view from a certain distance, without coming any nearer, the very being who is as necessary to him as food.
To us, men of the West, a very strange thing happened at the turn of the century; without noticing it, we lost science, or at least the thing that had been called by that name for the last four centuries. What we now have in place of it is something different, radically different, and we don't know what it is. Nobody knows what it is.
If a young girl is being forced into a brothel she will not talk about her rights. In such a situation the word would sound ludicrously inadequate.
Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be attained only by someone who is detached.
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.
The whole of our civilization is founded on specialization, which implies the enslavement of those who execute to those who coordinate.
Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil but as a necessity, or even a duty.