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To get power over is to defile. To possess is to defile.
Simone Weil
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Simone Weil
Age: 34 †
Born: 1909
Born: February 3
Died: 1943
Died: August 24
Autobiographer
Diarist
French Resistance Fighter
Philosopher
Poet
Teacher
Trade Unionist
Translator
Writer
Paris
France
Simone Adolphine Weil
Defile
Possess
Power
More quotes by Simone Weil
The whole evolution of present-day society tends to develop the various forms of bureaucratic oppression and to give them a sort of autonomy in regard to capitalism as such.
Simone Weil
When an apprentice gets hurt, or complains of being tired, the workmen and peasants have this fine expression: It is the trade entering his body. Each time that we have some pain to go through, we can say to ourselves quite truly that it is the universe, the order and beauty of the world, and the obedience of God that are entering our body.
Simone Weil
Rome is the Great Beast of atheism and materialism, adoring nothing but itself. Israel is the Great Beast of religion. Neither one nor the other is likable. The Great Beast is always repulsive
Simone Weil
Imaginary evil is romantic and varied real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.
Simone Weil
The extreme greatness of Christianity lies in the fact that it does not seek a supernatural remedy for suffering but a supernatural use for it.
Simone Weil
Meditation on the chance which led to the meeting of my mother and father is even more salutary than meditation on death.
Simone Weil
The demonstrable correlation of opposites is an image of the transcendental correlation of contradictories.
Simone Weil
Compassion directed toward oneself is true humility.
Simone Weil
Evil is neither suffering nor sin it is both at the same time, it is something common to them both. For they are linked together sin makes us suffer and suffering makes us evil, and this indissoluble complex of suffering and sin is the evil in which we are submerged against our will, and to our horror.
Simone Weil
At the centre of the human heart is the longing for an absolute good, a longing which is always there and is never appeased by any object in this world.
Simone Weil
Evil is license, and that is why it is monotonous: everything has to be drawn from ourselves. One is condemned to false infinity. That is hell itself.
Simone Weil
Religion in so far as it is a source of consolation is a hindrance to true faith and in this sense atheism is a purification. I have to be an atheist with that part of myself which is not made for God. Among those in whom the supernatural part of themselves has not been awakened, the atheists are right and the believers wrong.
Simone Weil
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.
Simone Weil
It is precisely those artists and writers who are most inclined to think of their art as the manifestation of their personality who are in fact the most in bondage to public taste.
Simone Weil
Because no other could do it, he himself went to the greatest possible distance, the infinite distance. This infinite distance between God and God, this supreme tearing apart, this incomparable agony, this marvel of love, is the crucifixion. Nothing can be further from God than that which has been made accursed.
Simone Weil
It is not the cause for which men took up arms that makes a victory more just or less, it is the order that is established when arms have been laid down.
Simone Weil
Every being cries out in silence to be read differently. Do not be indifferent to these cries.
Simone Weil
Bourgeois society is infected by monomania: the monomania of accounting. For it, the only thing that has value is what can be counted in francs and centimes. It never hesitates to sacrifice human life to figures which look well on paper, such as national budgets or industrial balance sheets.
Simone Weil
The entire universe is nothing but a great metaphor.
Simone Weil
The difference between more or less intelligent men is like the difference between criminals condemned to life imprisonment in smaller or larger cells. The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like a condemned man who is proud of his large cell.
Simone Weil