Best Simone Weil Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“At the very best, a mind enclosed in language is in prison. It is limited to the number of relations which words can make simultaneously present to it; and remains in ignorance of thoughts which involve the combination of a greater number. These thoughts are outside language, they are unformulable, although they are perfectly rigorous and clear and although every one of the relations they involve is capable of precise expression in words. So the mind moves in a closed space of partial truth, which may be larger or smaller, without ever being able so much as to glance at what is outside.”

Philosophy Language Simone Weil

Author:Simone Weil

“Existence is not an end in itself but merely the framework upon which all good, both real and imagined, may be built.”

Existence Building Goodness Framework Simone Weil Means And Ends

Book:Simone Weil: An Anthology

Source: Simone Weil: An Anthology

“Perfect joy excludes even the very feeling of joy, for in the soul filled by the object no corner is left for saying 'I'. We cannot imagine such joys when they are absent, thus the incentive for seeking them is lacking.”

Happiness Joy Meditation Perfection Simone Weil Beatitude

Book:Gravity and Grace

Source: Gravity and Grace

“Love for our neighbor, being made of creative attention, is analogous to genius.”

Love Attention Relationship Simone Weil

Book:Waiting for God

Source: Waiting for God

“In general the relative value of the various religions is a very difficult thing to discern; it is almost impossible, perhaps quite impossible. For a religion is known only from inside.”

Religion Culture Tradition Value Simone Weil

Book:Waiting for God

Source: Waiting for God

“The wish to see others suffer exactly what we are suffering. It is because of this that, except in periods of social instability, the spite of those in misfortune is directed against their fellows. That is a factor making for social stability.”

Pain Suffering Spite Stability Void Compensation Transference Simone Weil

Book:Gravity and Grace

Source: Gravity and Grace

“It sometimes happens that a thought, either formulated to oneself or not formulated at all, works secretly on the mind and yet has but little direct influence over it.”

Thinking Action Influence Thought Agency Unconscious Simone Weil

Book:The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties Towards Mankind

Source: The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties Towards Mankind

“There are two forms of friendship: meeting and separation. They are indissoluble. Both of them contain some good, and this good of friendship is unique, for when two beings who are not friends are near each other there is no meeting, and when friends are far apart there is no separation. As both forms contain the same good thing, they are both equally good.”

Love Friendship Distance Leaving Separation Meeting Simone Weil

Author:Simone Weil

“The secret of the human condition is that there is no equilibrium between man and the surrounding forces of nature, which infinitely exceed him when in inaction; there is only equilibrium in action by which man recreates his own life through work.”

Art Action Force Nature Work Creation Simone Weil

Book:Gravity and Grace

Source: Gravity and Grace

“Belief in immortality is harmful because it is not in our power to conceive of the soul as really incorporeal. So this belief is in fact a belief in the prolongation of life, and it robs death of its purpose.”

Life Soul Body Death Purpose Religion Faith Belief Dying Eternity Immortality Simone Weil Gravity And Grace

Book:Gravity and Grace

Source: Gravity and Grace

“To love purely is to consent to distance, it is to adore the distance between ourselves and that which we love.”

Love Relationships Friendship Distance Pure Love Subject Object Simone Weil

Book:Gravity and Grace

Source: Gravity and Grace

“Monotony is the most beautiful or the most atrocious thing. The most beautiful if it is a reflection of eternity--the most atrocious if it is the sign of an unvarying perpetuity. It is time surpassed or time sterilized.”

Time Work Beauty Eternity Monotony Simone Weil Perpetuity

Book:Gravity and Grace

Source: Gravity and Grace

“Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be obtained only by someone who is detached.”

Reality Attachment Detachment Simone Weil

Author:Simone Weil

“238. I want you to know, if you ever read this, there was a time when I would rather have had you by my side than any one of these words; I would rather have had you by my side than all the blue in the world. 239. But now you are talking as if love were a consolation. Simone Weil warned otherwise. “Love is not consolation,” she wrote. “It is light.” 240. All right then, let me try to rephrase. When I was alive, I aimed to be a student not of longing but of light.”

Love Light Color Blue Colour Nelson Simone Weil Maggie Nelson Bluets Weil

Book:Bluets

Source: Bluets