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

More quotes by Simone Weil

Image
The Our Father contains all possible petitions we cannot conceive of any prayer not already contained in it. It is to prayer what Christ is to humanity.
Simone Weil
Image
He who has not God in himself cannot feel His absence.
Simone Weil
Image
The contradictions the mind comes up against, these are the only realities, the criterion of the real. There is no contradiction in what is imaginary. Contradiction is the test of necessity.
Simone Weil
Image
Pain and suffering are a kind of currency passed from hand to hand until they reach someone who receives them but does not pass them on.
Simone Weil
Image
A test of what is real is that it is hard and rough. Joys are found in it, not pleasure. What is pleasant belongs to dreams.
Simone Weil
Image
Intellectual adherence is never owed to anything whatsoever, for it is never in any degree a voluntary thing. Attention alone is voluntary. It alone forms the subject of an obligation.
Simone Weil
Image
The recognition of human wretchedness is difficult for whoever is rich and powerful because he is almost invincibly led to believe that he is something. It is equally difficult for the man in miserable circumstances because he is almost invincibly led to believe that the rich and powerful man is something.
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
Even if our efforts of attention seem for years to be producing no result, one day a light that is in exact proportion to them will flood the soul.
Simone Weil
Image
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.
Simone Weil
Image
The real stumbling-block of totalitarian regimes is not the spiritual need of men for freedom of thought it is men's inability to stand the physical and nervous strain of a permanent state of excitement, except during a few years of their youth.
Simone Weil
Image
The great error of nearly all studies of war... has been to consider war as an episode in foreign policies, when it is an act of interior politics.
Simone Weil
Image
Modern life is given over to immoderation. Immoderation invades everything: actions and thought, public and private life.
Simone Weil
Image
When a contradiction is impossible to resolve except by a lie, then we know that it is really a door.
Simone Weil
Image
Death. An instantaneous state, without past or future. Indispensable for entering eternity.
Simone Weil
Image
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
Image
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.
Simone Weil
Image
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.
Simone Weil
Image
Charity. To love human beings in so far as they are nothing. That is to love them as God does.
Simone Weil
Image
Those who love a cause are those who love the life which has to be led in order to serve it.
Simone Weil