Simone Weil

Even if our efforts of attention seem for years to be producing no result, one day a light that is in exact proportion to them will flood the soul.

In the Church, considered as a social organism, the mysteries inevitably degenerate into beliefs.

Difficult as it is really to listen to someone in affliction, it is just as difficult for him to know that compassion is listening to him.

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

Every time that I think of the crucifixion of Christ, I commit the sin of envy.

A mind enclosed in language is in prison.

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

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

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

When a contradiction is impossible to resolve except by a lie, then we know that it is really a door.

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

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

It is grace that forms the void inside us and it is grace that can fill the void.

The work of art which I do not make, none other will ever make.

Algebra and money are essentially levelers; the first intellectually, the second effectively.

One has only the choice between God and idolatry. There is no other possibility. For the faculty of worship is in us, and it is either directed somewhere into this world, or into another.

We are like plants which have the one choice of being in or out of the light.

The needs of a human being are sacred. Their satisfaction cannot be subordinated either to reasons of state, or to any consideration of money, nationality, race, or color, or to the moral or other value attributed to the human being in question, or to any consideration whatsoever.

One should identify oneself with the universe itself. Everything that is less than the universe is subjected to suffering.

The world is God's language to us.