Simone Weil Simone Weil, who occasionally used the anagrammatic pen name Emile Novis, was a French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist.Weil was born in Paris to Alsatian agnostic Jewish parents who fled the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine to more..more..

“ Simone Weil:We can know only 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. [p.216] #God#God

“ Simone Weil: I can, therefore I am. #Existence#Existence

“ Simone Weil: When once a certain class of people has been placed by the temporal and spiritual authorities outside the ranks of those whose life has value, then nothing comes more naturally to men than murder. #Murder#Murder

“ Simone Weil:If we love God while thinking that he does not exist, he will manifest his existence. [p.260] #Love#Love

“ Simone Weil:It is not in a person's nature to desire what he already has. Desire is a tendency, the start of a movement toward something, toward a point from which one is absent. If, at the very outset, this movement doubles back on itself toward its point of departure, a person turns round and round like a squirrel in a cage or a prisoner in a condemned cell. Constant turning soon produces revulsion. All workers, especially though not exclusively those who work under inhumane conditions, are easily the victims of revulsion, exhaustion and disgust and the strongest are often the worst affected. [p.245] #Sensitivity #Sensitivity

“ Simone Weil: Beauty always promises, but never gives anything. #Beauty#Beauty

“ Simone Weil: Every new development for the last three centuries has brought men closer to a state of affairs in which absolutely nothing would be recognized in the whole world as possessing a claim to obedience except the authority of the State. The majority of people in Europe obey nothing else. #State #State

“ Simone Weil: 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. #God #God

“ Simone Weil: 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. #God#God

“ Simone Weil: To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul. #Soul#Soul

“ Simone Weil:God's love for us is not the reason for which we should love him. God's love for us is the reason for us to love ourselves. [p.270] #Love#Love

“ Simone Weil:I also am other than what I imagine myself to be. To know this is forgiveness. [p.200] #Forgiveness#Forgiveness

“ Simone Weil: I am not a Catholic; but I consider the Christian idea, which has its roots in Greek thought and in the course of the centuries has nourished all of our European civilization, as something that one cannot renounce without becoming degraded. #Christians and Christianity#Christians and Christianity

“ Simone Weil: 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. #Friends and Friendship#Friends and Friendship

“ Simone Weil:By a strange mystery — which is connected with the power of the social element — a profession can confer on quite ordinary men in their exercise of it, virtues which, if they were extended to all circumstances of life, would make of them heroes or saints. [p.124] #Heroes and Heroism#Heroes and Heroism

“ Simone Weil: The destruction of the past is perhaps the greatest of all crimes. #Past#Past

“ Simone Weil:In order to obey God, one must receive his commands. How did it happen that I received them in adolescence, while I was professing atheism? To believe that the desire for good is always fulfilled — that is faith, and whoever has it is not an atheist. #Atheism#Atheism

“ Simone Weil:If you say to someone who has ears to hear: "What you are doing to me is not just," you may touch and awaken at its source the spirit of attention and love. But it is not the same with words like, "I have the right..." or "you have no right to..." They evoke a latent war and awaken the spirit of contention. [p.63] #Love#Love

“ Simone Weil: 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. #Reality#Reality

“ Simone Weil: Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our life. #Imagination#Imagination

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