Simone Weil
Simone Weil
Simone Weil; 3 February 1909 – 24 August 1943) was a French philosopher, Christian mystic, and political activist...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth3 February 1909
CityParis, France
CountryFrance
submission renunciation
Renunciation is submission to time.
order evil desire
If someone does me injury I must desire that this injury shall not degrade me. I must desire this out of love for him who inflicts it, in order that he may not really have done evil.
renounce
We only possess what we renounce; what we do not renounce escapes from us.
fighting prejudice missions
All the Freudian system is impregnated with the prejudice which it makes it its mission to fight -- the prejudice that everything sexual is vile.
purity ability contemplating
Purity is the ability to contemplate defilement.
trying attention faults
We have to try to cure our faults by attention and not by will.
real believe past
It is not for man to seek, or even to believe in, God. He only has to refuse his ultimate love to everything that is not God. This refusal does not presuppose any belief. It is enough to recognize what is obvious to any mind: that all the goods of this world, past, present, and future, real or imaginary, are finite and limited and radically incapable of satisfying the desire that perpetually burns within us for an infinite and perfect good.
steps action spirituality
[We are not] to take one step, even in the direction of what is good, beyond that to which we are irresistibly impelled by God, and this applies to action, word, and thought.
truth desire impossible
It is impossible that the whole of truth should not be present at every time and every place, available for anyone who desires it.
glasses doe seeing
Someone who does not see a pane of glass is not aware of not seeing it.
loss light suggestions
A well ordered society would be one where the State only had a negative action, comparable to that of a rudder: a light pressure at the right moment to counteract the first suggestion of any loss of equilibrium.
love-is radiance pure-love
Everything which originates from pure love is lit with the radiance of beauty.
teaching should-have training
The authentic and pure values, truth, beauty, and goodness, in the activity of a human being are the result of one and the same act, a certain application of the full attention to the object. Teaching should have no aim but to prepare, by training the attention, for the possibility of such an act. All the other advantages of instruction are without interest.
firsts indirect method
Only an indirect method is effective. We do nothing if we have not first drawn back.