Simone Weil

Quotations from her Writings

Simone Weil's writings lend themselves readily to quotation.

Nothing is so beautiful and wonderful, nothing is so continually fresh and surprising, so full of sweet and perpetual ecstasy, as the good. No desert is so dreary, monotonous, and boring as evil. This is the truth about authentic good and evil. With fictional good and evil it is the other way round. Fictional good is boring and flat, while fictional evil is varied and intriguing, attractive, profound, and full of charm.

Morality and Literature

But the works of authentic genius from past ages remain, and are available to us. Their contemplation is the ever-flowing source of an inspiration which may legitimately guide us. For this inspiration, if we know how to receive it, tends---as Plato said---to make us grow wings to overcome gravity.

Morality and Literature

Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life.

The future is made of the same stuff as the present.

On Science, Necessity, and the Love of God (ed. Richard Rees), `Some Thoughts on the Love of God', 1940-42

What a country calls its vital economic interests are not the things which enable its citizens to live, but the things which enable it to make war. Petrol is much more likely than wheat to be a cause of international conflict.

Simone Weil (1909 - 1943), The Need for Roots (1949)

All sins are attempts to fill voids.

Here are some links to other collections of quotations from her work:

http://www.cyber-nation.com/victory/quotations/authors/quotes_weil_simone.html

http://www.memorablequotations.com/weil.htm

http://womenshistory.about.com/library/qu/blquweil.htm

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Ithaca/7583/simoneweil.html

Simone Weil on Beauty

http://calvin.ednet.lsu.edu/~ceppert/quotes_june_to_august2002.htm