Only an indirect method is effective. We do nothing if we have not first drawn back. Simone Weil More Quotes by Simone Weil More Quotes From Simone Weil Every perfect life is a parable invented by God. Simone Weil parables perfect life Time does us violence; it is the only violence. Simone Weil violence doe Armies under the control of ... a sovereign State cannot bring freedom to anyone. Simone Weil sovereign army states Every atheist is an idolater- unless he is worshipping the true God in his impersonal aspect. The majority of the pious are idolaters. Simone Weil majority objectivity atheist prayer consists of attention. It is the orientation of all the attention of which the soul is capable towards God. The quality of the attention counts for much in the quality of the prayer. Warmth of heart cannot make up for it. Simone Weil soul prayer heart It is only from the light which streams constantly from heaven that a tree can derive the energy to strike its roots deep into the soil. The tree is in fact rooted in the sky. Simone Weil nature light sky In reality nothing is so beautiful as the good, nothing is so monotonous and boring as evil. Simone Weil evil beautiful reality A Pharisee is someone who is virtuous out of obedience to the Great Beast. Simone Weil beast pharisees obedience In this world we live in a mixture of time and eternity. Hell would be pure time. Simone Weil would-be time world The whole evolution of present-day society tends to develop the various forms of bureaucratic oppression and to give them a sort of autonomy in regard to capitalism as such. Simone Weil oppression evolution giving In the Church, considered as a social organism, the mysteries inevitably degenerate into beliefs. Simone Weil degenerates church belief The most important part of teaching is to teach what it is to know. Simone Weil teaching education teacher The children of God should not have any other country here below but the universe itself, with the totality of all the reasoning creatures it ever has contained, contains, or ever will contain. That is the native city to which we owe our love. Simone Weil love country children In the intellectual order, the virtue of humility is nothing more nor less than the power of attention. Simone Weil humility power order Most works of art, like most wines, ought to be consumed in the district of their fabrication. Simone Weil ought wine art During the last quarter of a century all the authority associated with the function of spiritual guidance ... has seeped down into the lowest publications. ... Between a poem by Valéry and an advertisement for a beauty cream promising a rich marriage to anyone who used it there was at no point a breach of continuity. So as a result of literature's spiritual usurpation a beauty cream advertisement possessed, in the eyes of little village girls, the authority that was formerly attached to the words of priests. Simone Weil girl eye spiritual All the tragedies which we can imagine return in the end to the one and only tragedy: the passage of time. Simone Weil imagine return tragedy The word 'revolution' is a word for which you kill, for which you die, for which you send the labouring masses to their deaths; but which does not contain any content. Simone Weil mass revolution doe A doctrine serves no purpose in itself, but it is indispensable to have one if only to avoid being deceived by false doctrines. Simone Weil doctrine fake-people purpose The poison of skepticism becomes, like alcoholism, tuberculosis, and some other diseases, much more virulent in a hitherto virgin soil. Simone Weil tuberculosis disease poison
