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.
Interpretation
Faith should be approached with contemplation rather than rigid affirmation or denial.
In this quote, Simone Weil suggests that the complexities and profound aspects of faith cannot be simplified into mere judgments of true or false. Instead of forcing faith into a binary framework of affirmation and negation, it should be experienced as a subject of deep contemplation that allows for exploration and understanding of its nuances.
In practice
In a discussion about spiritual beliefs, this quote could emphasize the importance of reflective thinking.
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.
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
As soon as men know that they can kill without fear of punishment or blame, they kill; or at least they encourage killers with approving smiles.
Evil is license, and that is why it is monotonous: everything has to be drawn from ourselves. One is condemned to false infinity. That is hell itself.
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.
How many people have been thus led, through lack of self-confidence, to stifle their most justified doubts?
True, I talk of dreams, Which are the children of an idle brain, Begot of nothing but vain fantasy.
There is no perfect virtue-none that bears fruit- unless it is exercised by means of our neighbor.
The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there's no risk of accident for someone who's dead.
The emergence of the Atomic Age brought the previously inchoate and 'free-floating' anxiety of many people into sharp focus.
There is always a very delicate interplay between individual actions and institutional conditions. But there is no such thing as institutional conditions without any individual actions and no such thing as individual action without institutional conditions. So there is always personal responsibility.
What we wish, we readily believe, and what we ourselves think, we imagine others think also.
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