"To set up as a standard of public morality a notion which can neither be defined nor conceived is to open the door to every kind of tyranny."
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Quote collection
Simone Weil quotes (page 6 of 19)
374 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"We are like plants which have the one choice of being in or out of the light."
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"True definition of science: the study of the beauty of the world."
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"Love of God is pure when joy and suffering inspire an equal degree of gratitude."
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"Fire destroys that which feeds it."
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"We have to endure the discordance between imagination and fact. It is better to say, “I am suffering,” than to say, “This landscape is ugly."
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"Those who love a cause are those who love the life which has to be led in order to serve it."
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"As for the spirit of poverty, I do not remember any moment when it was not in me, although only to that unhappily small extent compatible with my imperfection. I fell in love with Saint Francis of Assisi as soon as I came to know about him. I always believed and hoped that one day Fate would force upon me the condition of a vagabond and a beggar which he embraced freely. Actually I felt the same way about prison."
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"Art is the symbol of the two noblest human efforts: to construct and to refrain from destruction."
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"The world is God's language to us."
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"The extreme greatness of Christianity lies in the fact that it does not seek a supernatural remedy for suffering but a supernatural use for it."
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"I also am other than what I imagine myself to be. To know this is forgiveness."
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"It seemed to me certain, and I still think so today, that one can never wrestle enough with God if one does so out of pure regard for the truth. Christ likes us to prefer truth to him because, before being Christ, he is truth. If one turns aside from him to go toward the truth, one will not go far before falling into his arms."
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"If we forgive God for his crime against us, which is to have made us finite creatures, He will forgive our crime against him, which is that we are finite creatures."
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"A modern factory reaches perhaps almost the limit of horror. Everybody in it is constantly harassed and kept on edge by the interference of extraneous wills while the soul is left in cold desolate misery. What man needs is silence and warmth; what he is given is an icy pandemonium. Physical labor may be painful, but it is not degrading as such. It is not art; it is not science; it is something else, possessing an exactly equal value with art and science, for it provides an equal opportunity to reach the impersonal stage of attention."
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"The appetite for power, even for universal power, is only insane when there is no possibility of indulging it; a man who sees the possibility opening before him and does not try to grasp it, even at the risk of destroying himself and his country, is either"
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"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."
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"Beauty is a fruit which we look at without trying to seize it."
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"The most important part of teaching is to teach what it is to know."
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"The payment of debts is necessary for social order. The non-payment is quite equally necessary for social order. For centuries humanity has oscillated, serenely unaware, between these two contradictory necessities."
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