The voices / 75 fragments

Simone Weil

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01Undated

There is something else which has the power to awaken us to the truth. It is the works of writers of genius. They give us, in the guise of fiction, something equivalent to the actual density of the real, that density which life offers us every day but which we are unable to grasp because we are amusing ourselves with lies.

Simone Weil / quote

02Undated

There is something in our soul that loathes true attention much more violently than flesh loathes fatigue. That something is much closer to evil than flesh is. That is why, every time we truly give our attention, we destroy some evil in ourselves. If one pays attention with this intention, fifteen minutes of attention is worth a lot of good works.

Simone Weil / quote

03Undated

A mind enclosed in language is in prison.

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04Undated

The sum of the particular intentions of God is the universe itself.

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05Undated

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.

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06Undated

All sins are attempts to fill voids.

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07Undated

If we know in what way society is unbalanced, we must do what we can to add weight to the lighter scale ... we must have formed a conception of equilibrium and be ever ready to change sides like justice, 'that fugitive from the camp of conquerors'.

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08Undated

One must always be prepared to switch sides with justice, that fugitive of the winning camp.

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09Undated

It is to the prodigals...that the memory of their Father's house comes back. If the son had lived economically he would never have thought of returning.

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10Undated

Liberty, taking the word in its concrete sense, consists in the ability to choose.

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11Undated

Whether the mask is labeled fascism, democracy, or dictatorship of the proletariat, our great adversary remains the apparatus—the bureaucracy, the police, the military. Not the one facing us across the frontier of the battle lines, which is not so much our enemy as our brothers' enemy, but the one that calls itself our protector and makes us its slaves. No matter what the circumstances, the worst betrayal will always be to subordinate ourselves to this apparatus and to trample underfoot, in its service, all human values in ourselves and in others.

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12Undated

God can never be perfectly present to us here below on account of our flesh. But he can be almost perfectly absent from us in extreme affliction. This is the only possibility of perfection for us on earth. That is why the Cross is our only hope.

Simone Weil / quote

13Undated

It is because the will has no power to bring about salvation that the idea of secular morality is an absurdity. What is called morality only depends on the will in what is, so to speak, its most muscular aspect. Religion on the contrary corresponds to desire, and it is desire that saves...To long for God and to renounce all the rest, that alone can save.

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14Undated

Fashion exerts more power in science than it does on the shape of hats.

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15Undated

There isn't a man on earth who doesn't at times pronounce an opinion on good and evil, even if it be only to find fault with somebody else.

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16Undated

Why is the determination to fight against a prejudice a sure sign that one is full of it? Such a determination necessarily arises from an obsession. It constitutes an utterly sterile effort to get rid of it. In such a case the light of attention is the only thing which is effective, and it is not compatible with a polemical intention.

Simone Weil / quote

17Undated

Pain is the root of knowledge.

Simone Weil / quote

18Undated

A work of art has an author and yet when it is perfect it has something which is anonymous about it.

Simone Weil / quote

19Undated

Those who love a cause are those who love the life which has to be led in order to serve it.

Simone Weil / quote

20Undated

Those who serve a cause are not those who love that cause. They are those who love the life which has to be led in order to serve it - except in the case of the very purest and they are rare.

Simone Weil / quote

21Undated

Grace fills empty spaces but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it and it is grace itself which makes this void.

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22Undated

Fire destroys that which feeds it.

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23Undated

If we go down into ourselves we find that we possess exactly what we desire.

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24Undated

A hateful act is the transference to others of the degradation we bear in ourselves.

Simone Weil / quote