Simone Weil

To us, men of the West, a very strange thing happened at the turn of the century without noticing it, we lost science, or at least the thing that had been called by that name for the last four centuries. What we now have in place of it is something different, radically different, and we don't know what it is. Nobody knows what it is.

Purity is the power to contemplate defilement.

At the bottom of the heart of every human being, from earliest infancy until the tomb, there is something that goes on indomitably expecting, in the teeth of all experience of crimes committed, suffered, and witnessed, that good and not evil will be done

The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like the condemned man who is proud of his large cell.

The role of the intelligence - that part of us which affirms and denies and formulates opinions is merely to submit.

The future is made of the same stuff as the present.

The most important part of teaching to teach what it is to know.

To get power over is to defile. To possess is to defile.

Every perfect life is a parable invented by God.

Life does not need to mutilate itself in order to be pure.

The poison of skepticism becomes, like alcoholism, tuberculosis, and some other diseases, much more virulent in a hitherto virgin soil.

I can, therefore I am.

The most important part of teaching is to teach what it is to know.

In struggling against anguish one never produces serenity the struggle against anguish only produces new forms of anguish.

We can only know one thing about God - that he is what we are not. Our wretchedness alone is an image of this. The more we contemplate it, the more we contemplate him.

To want friendship is a great fault. Friendship ought to be a gratuitous joy, like the joys afforded by art or life.

It is only the impossible that is possible for God. He has given over the possible to the mechanics of matter and the autonomy of his creatures.

Whatever debases the intelligence degrades the entire human being.

The mysteries of faith are degraded if they are made into an object of affirmation and negation, when in reality they should be an object of contemplation.

A doctrine serves no purpose in itself, but it is indispensable to have one if only to avoid being deceived by false doctrines.

To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.

One cannot imagine St. Francis of Assisi talking about rights.

A hurtful act is the transference to others of the degradation which we bear in ourselves.

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.

If Germany, thanks to Hitler and his successors, were to enslave the European nations and destroy most of the treasures of their past, future historians would certainly pronounce that she had civilized Europe.