Simone Weil Life Quotations

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

Every perfect life is a parable invented by God.

Life does not need to mutilate itself in order to be pure.

Love is not consolation, it is light.

One does not play Bach without having done scales. But neither does one play a scale merely for the sake of the scale.

Modern life is given over to immoderation. Immoderation invades everything: actions and thought, public and private life.

One of the most exquisite pleasures of human love - to serve the loved one without his knowing it - is only possible, as regards the love of God, through atheism.

Only he who has measured the dominion of force, and knows how not to respect it, is capable of love andjustice.

If you say to someone who has ears to hear: "What you are doing to me is not just," you may touch and awaken at its source the spirit of attention and love. But it is not the same with words like, "I have the right..." or "you have no right to..." They evoke a latent war and awaken the spirit of contention.

He who does not realize to what extent shifting fortune and necessity hold in subjection every human spirit, cannot regard as fellow-creatures nor love as he loves himself those whom chance separated from him by an abyss. The variety of constraints pressing upon man give rise to the illusion of several distinct species that cannot communicate. Only he who has measured the dominion of force, and knows how not to respect it, is capable of love and justice.