Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" 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. "

Simone Weil

Without

Thought

Roots

Related Quotes:

" Evil being the root of mystery, pain is the root of knowledge. "

" There is no detachment where there is no pain. And there is no pain endured without hatred or lying unless detachment is present too. "

" A science which does not bring us nearer to God is worthless. "

Simone Weil

God

Worthless

" There can be a true grandeur in any degree of submissiveness, because it springs from loyalty to the laws and to an oath, and not from baseness of soul. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

Simone Weil

Poison

" Oppression that is clearly inexorable and invincible does not give rise to revolt but to submission. "

" The destruction of the past is perhaps the greatest of all crimes. "

" Two prisoners whose cells adjoin communicate with each other by knocking on the wall. The wall is the thing which separates them but is also their means of communication. It is the same with us and God. Every separation is a link. "

" A self-respecting nation is ready for anything, including war, except for a renunciation of its option to make war. "

" In the intellectual order, the virtue of humility is nothing more nor less than the power of attention. "

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

" Nothing is less instructive than a machine. "

" If we are suffering illness, poverty, or misfortune, we think we shall be satisfied on the day it ceases. But there too, we know it is false; so soon as one has got used to not suffering one wants something else. "

" It is not the cause for which men took up arms that makes a victory more just or less, it is the order that is established when arms have been laid down. "

Simone Weil

Down

Victory

" It is an eternal obligation toward the human being not to let him suffer from hunger when one has a chance of coming to his assistance. "

" 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. "

" Those who are unhappy have no need for anything in this world but people capable of giving them their attention. "

" With no matter what human being, taken individually, I always find reasons for concluding that sorrow and misfortune do not suit him; either because he seems too mediocre for anything so great, or, on the contrary, too precious to be destroyed. "

" What a country calls its vital... interests are not things that help its people live, but things that help it make war. "

" The danger is not lest the soul should doubt whether there is any bread, but lest, by a lie, it should persuade itself that it is not hungry. "

" There is one, and only one, thing in modern society more hideous than crime namely, repressive justice. "

Simone Weil

Justice

Modern

" Petroleum is a more likely cause of international conflict than wheat. "

" I would suggest that barbarism be considered as a permanent and universal human characteristic which becomes more or less pronounced according to the play of circumstances. "

Simone Weil

Human

Circumstances

" The only hope of socialism resides in those who have already brought about in themselves, as far as is possible in the society of today, that union between manual and intellectual labor which characterizes the society we are aiming at. "

" The contemporary form of true greatness lies in a civilization founded on the spirituality of work. "

" I can, therefore I am. "

Simone Weil

I Am

I Can