Quote

We only possess what we renounce what we do not renounce escapes from us.

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
Escapes
Renounce
Possess

More quotes by Simone Weil

Image
Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.
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
Justice consists in seeing that no harm is done to men. Whenever a man cries inwardly: 'Why am I being hurt?' harm is being done to him. He is often mistaken when he tries to define the harm, and why and by whom it is being inflicted on him. But the cry itself is infallible.
Simone Weil
Image
How many people have been thus led, through lack of self-confidence, to stifle their most justified doubts?
Simone Weil
Image
Capitalism has brought about the emancipation of collective humanity with respect to nature. But this collective humanity has itself taken on with respect to the individual the oppressive function formerly exercised by nature.
Simone Weil
Image
The destruction of the past is perhaps the greatest of all crimes.
Simone Weil
Image
In struggling against anguish one never produces serenity the struggle against anguish only produces new forms of anguish.
Simone Weil
Image
Nothing can have as its destination anything other than its origin. The contrary idea, the idea of progress, is poison.
Simone Weil
Image
The beautiful is the experimental proof that the incarnation is possible.
Simone Weil
Image
In the Church, considered as a social organism, the mysteries inevitably degenerate into beliefs.
Simone Weil
Image
To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.
Simone Weil
Image
There is only one fault, only one: our inability to feed upon light.
Simone Weil
Image
When a man's life is destroyed or damaged by some wound or privation of soul or body, which is due to other men's actions or negligence, it is not only his sensibility that suffers but also his aspiration toward the good. Therefore there has been sacrilege towards that which is sacred in him.
Simone Weil
Image
I suffer more from the humiliations inflicted by my country than from those inflicted on her.
Simone Weil
Image
The speed with which bureaucracy has invaded almost every branch of human activity is something astounding once one thinks about it.
Simone Weil
Image
The only great spirit of our time.
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 development of the faculty of attention forms the real object and almost the sole interest of studies.
Simone Weil
Image
The struggle between the opponents and defenders of capitalism is a struggle between innovators who do not know what innovation to make and conservatives who do not know what to conserve.
Simone Weil
Image
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