Quote

Purity is the ability to contemplate defilement.

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
Contemplating
Purity
Ability
Defilement
Contemplate

More quotes by Simone Weil

Image
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
Image
Uprooting is by far the most dangerous of the ills of human society, for it perpetuates itself.
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
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
Image
It is impossible that the whole of truth should not be present at every time and every place, available for anyone who desires it.
Simone Weil
Image
Electra weeping for the dead Orestes. If we love God while thinking that he does not exist, he will manifest his existence.
Simone Weil
Image
The payment of debts is necessary for social order. The non-payment is quite equally necessary for social order. For centuries humanity has oscillated, serenely unaware, between these two contradictory necessities.
Simone Weil
Image
Necessity is God's veil.
Simone Weil
Image
The villagers seldom leave the village many scientists have limited and poorly cultivated minds apart from their specialty.
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
Punishment is a vital need of the human soul.
Simone Weil
Image
Friendship is a miracle by which a person consents to view from a certain distance, without coming any nearer, the very being who is as necessary to him as food.
Simone Weil
Image
the instruments of power - arms, gold, machines, magical or technical secrets - always exist independently of him who disposes of them, and can be taken up by others. Consequently all power is unstable.
Simone Weil
Image
I also am other than what I imagine myself to be. To know this is forgiveness.
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
We cannot take a single step toward heaven. It is not in our power to travel in a vertical direction. If however we look heavenward for a long time, God comes and takes us up.
Simone Weil
Image
The entire universe is nothing but a great metaphor.
Simone Weil
Image
He who has not God in himself cannot feel His absence.
Simone Weil
Image
In the Church, considered as a social organism, the mysteries inevitably degenerate into beliefs.
Simone Weil
Image
The joy of learning is as indispensable in study as breathing is in running. Where it is lacking there are no real students, but only poor caricatures of apprentices who, at the end of their apprenticeship, will not even have a trade.
Simone Weil