Simone Weil (/veɪ/; French: [simɔn vɛj] ( listen); 3 February 1909 – 24 August 1943) was a French philosopher, mystic, and political activist.
You could not be born at a better period than the present, when we have lost everything.
All sins are attempts to fill voids.
Concern for the symbol has completely disappeared from our science. And yet, if one were to give oneself the trouble, one could easily find, in certain parts at least of contemporary mathematics. . . symbols as clear, as beautiful, and as full of spiritual meaning as that of the circle and mediation. From modern thought to ancient wisdom the path would be short and direct, if one cared to take it.
Every atheist is an idolater- unless he is worshipping the true God in his impersonal aspect. The majority of the pious are idolaters.
Love of God is pure when joy and suffering inspire an equal degree of gratitude.
If you say to someone who has ears to hear: "What you are doing to me is not just," you may touch and awaken at its source the spirit of attention and love. But it is not the same with words like, "I have the right. . . " or "you have no right to. . . " They evoke a latent war and awaken the spirit of contention.
There is no greater joy for me than looking at the sky on a clear night with an attention so concentrated that all my other thoughts disappear; then one can think that the stars enter into one's soul.
A modern factory reaches perhaps almost the limit of horror. Everybody in it is constantly harassed and kept on edge by the interference of extraneous wills while the soul is left in cold desolate misery. What man needs is silence and warmth; what he is given is an icy pandemonium. Physical labor may be painful, but it is not degrading as such. It is not art; it is not science; it is something else, possessing an exactly equal value with art and science, for it provides an equal opportunity to reach the impersonal stage of attention.
Meditation on the chance which led to the meeting of my mother and father is even more salutary than meditation on death.
The same suffering is much harder to bear for a high motive than for a base one. The people [during World War II] who stood motionless, from one to eight in the morning, for the sake of having an egg, would have found it very difficult to do in order to save a human life.
In solitude we are in the presence of mere matter (even the sky, the stars, the moon, trees in blossom), things of less value (perhaps) than a human spirit. Its value lies in the greater possibility of attention.
We do not obtain the most precious gifts by going in search of them but by waiting for them.
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.
A self-respecting nation is ready for anything, including war, except for a renunciation of its option to make war.
When we hit a nail with a hammer the whole of the shock received by the large head of the nail passes into a point without any of it being lost, although it is only a point. If the hammer and head of the nail were infinitely big, if would be just the same; the point of the nail would transmit this infinite shock at the point to which it was applied. Extreme affliction, which means physical pain, distress of the soul, and social degradation all at the same time, is a nail whose point is applied at the very center of the soul, whose head is all necessity, spreading throughout space and time
Christians ought to suspect that affliction is the very essence of creation. To be a created thing is not necessarily to be afflicted, but it is necessarily to be exposed to affliction. . . . Affliction is the surest sign that God wishes to be loved by us; it is the most precious evidence of His tenderness.
In what concerns divine things, belief is not appropriate. Only certainty will do. Anything less than certainty is unworthy of God.
Nothing is worse than extreme affliction which destroys the "I" from the outside, because after that we can no longer destroy it ourselves.
Man alone can enslave man.
Mathematics alone make us feel the limits of our intelligence. For we can always suppose in the case of an experiment that it is inexplicable because we don't happen to have all the data. In mathematics we have all the data and yet we don't understand. We always come back to the contemplation of our human wretchedness. What force is in relation to our will, the impenetrable opacity of mathematics is in relation to our intelligence.