Quote

The Hebrews took for their idol, not something made of metal or wood, but a race, a nation, something just as earthly. Their religion is essentially inseparable from such idolatry, because of the notion of the 'chosen people'.

Simone Weil

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Race
Idols
Hebrews
Nations
Wood
Idolatry
Religion
Essentially
Hebrew
Made
Woods
Idol
Something
Chosen
Inseparable
People
Notion
Earthly
Took
Metal
Nation
Metals

More quotes by Simone Weil

Image
Art has no immediate future, because all art is collective and there is no more collective life.
Simone Weil
Image
The feeding of those that are hungry is a form of contemplation.
Simone Weil
Image
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
Image
Beauty captivates the flesh in order to obtain permission to pass right through to the soul. . . . When the feeling for beauty happens to be associated with the sight of some human being, the transference of love is made possible, at any rate in an illusory manner. But it is all the beauty of the world, it is universal beauty, for which we yearn.
Simone Weil
Image
I suffer more from the humiliations inflicted by my country than from those inflicted on her.
Simone Weil
Image
If you want to know what a man is really like, take notice of how he acts when he loses money.
Simone Weil
Image
The destruction of the past is perhaps the greatest of all crimes.
Simone Weil
Image
Compassion directed to oneself is humility.
Simone Weil
Image
When literature becomes deliberately indifferent to the opposition of good and evil it betrays its function and forfeits all claim to excellence.
Simone Weil
Image
A man thinks he is dying for his country, said Anatole France, but he is dying for a few industrialists. But even that is saying too much. What one dies for is not even so substantial and tangible as an industrialist.
Simone Weil
Image
We are like horses who hurt themselves as soon as they pull on their bits - and we bow our heads. We even lose consciousness of the situation, we just submit. Any re-awakening of thought is then painful.
Simone Weil
Image
Time's violence rends the soul, by the rent eternity enters.
Simone Weil
Image
To want friendship is a great fault. Friendship ought to be a gratuitous joy, like the joys afforded by art or life.
Simone Weil
Image
Distance is the soul of beauty.
Simone Weil
Image
What a country calls its vital... interests are not things that help its people live, but things that help it make war.
Simone Weil
Image
The notion of rights is linked with the notion of sharing out, of exchange, of measured quantity. It has a commercial flavor, essentially evocative of legal claims and arguments. Rights are always asserted in a tone of contention and when this tone is adopted, it must rely upon force in the background, or else it will be laughed at.
Simone Weil
Image
The proper method of philosophy consists in clearly conceiving the insoluble problems in all their insolubility and then in simply contemplating them, fixedly and tirelessly, year after year, without any hope, patiently waiting.
Simone Weil
Image
prayer consists of attention. It is the orientation of all the attention of which the soul is capable towards God. The quality of the attention counts for much in the quality of the prayer. Warmth of heart cannot make up for it.
Simone Weil
Image
Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.
Simone Weil
Image
Only he who has measured the dominion of force, and knows how not to respect it, is capable of love andjustice.
Simone Weil