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
lying ideas evil
To claim that theft or adultery or lying are "evil" simply reflects our degraded idea of good-—that it has something to do with respect for property, respectability, and sincerity.
men soul suffering
When a man's life is destroyed or damaged by some wound or privation of soul or body, which is due to other men's actions or negligence, it is not only his sensibility that suffers but also his aspiration toward the good. Therefore there has been sacrilege towards that which is sacred in him.
life order doe
Life does not need to mutilate itself in order to be pure.
men giving debt
Men owe us what we imagine they will give us. We must forgive them this debt.
moving cutting suffering
The afflicted are not listened to. They are like someone whose tongue has been cut out and who occasionally forgets the fact. When they move their lips no ear perceives any sound. And they themselves soon sink into impotence in the use of language, because of the certainty of not being heard.
inspirational courage suffering
One should identify oneself with the universe itself. Everything that is less than the universe is subjected to suffering.
real history imagination
Imagination is always the fabric of social life and the dynamic of history. The influence of real needs and compulsions, of real interests and materials, is indirect because the crowd is never conscious of it.
beautiful proof incarnation
The beautiful is the experimental proof that the incarnation is possible.
real imagination suffering
Christ himself came down and took possession of me. . . I had never foreseen the possibility of that, of a real contact, person to person, here below, between a human being and God. . . in this sudden possession of me by Christ, neither my sense nor my imagination had any part: I only felt in the midst of my suffering the presence of a love.
beautiful fall tree
The vulnerability of precious things is beautiful because vulnerability is a mark of existence. The destruction of Troy. The fall of the petals from fruit trees in blossom. To know that what is most precious is not rooted in existence - that is beautiful.
lying people degrees
In this world, only those people who have fallen to the lowest degree of humiliation, far below beggary, who are not just without any social consideration but are regarded by all as being deprived of that foremost human dignity, reason itself - only those people, in fact, are capable of telling the truth. All the others lie.
stars giving tree
Stars and blossoming fruit-trees: utter permanence and extreme fragility give an equal sense of eternity.
men evil effort
In a general way, the literature of the twentieth century is essentially psychological; and psychology consists of describing states of the soul by displaying them all on the same plane, without any discrimination of value, as though good and evil were external to them, as though the effort toward the good could be absent at any moment from the thought of any man.
moving roots uprooting
Uprooting is by far the most dangerous of the ills of human society, for it perpetuates itself.