The Notebooks of Simone Weil Quotes

“To accept what is bitter; acceptance must not be allowed to project itself on to the bitterness and lessen it; otherwise the force and purity of the acceptance are proportionally lessened. For the object of the acceptance is to taste what is bitter, as such, and not anything else. (St. Thomas on the suffering of Christ.)—To say like Ivan Karamazov: nothing can possibly make up for a single tear from a single child. And yet to accept all tears, and the countless horrors which lie beyond tears. To accept these things not simply in so far as they may admit of compensations, but in themselves. To accept that they should exist, simply because they do exist.

To accept that event because it exists, and by this acceptance to love God through and beyond it. To accept that it should exist, because it does exist, what exactly does this mean? Is it not simply to recognize that it is?

When one loves God through and beyond evil as such, it is indeed God whom one loves.”
― Simone Weil, The Notebooks of Simone Weil

“Purity is the ability to contemplate defilement.”
― Simone Weil, The Notebooks of Simone Weil

“A village idiot, in the literal sense, who really loves the truth, even when he only babbles, is in his thinking infinitely superior to Aristotle. He is infinitely nearer to Plato than Aristotle ever was.”
― Simone Weil, The Notebooks of Simone Weil

“The Cross of Christ is the only gateway to knowledge.”
― Simone Weil, The Notebooks of Simone Weil

“To love God all-powerless.”
― Simone Weil, The Notebooks of Simone Weil

“Contact with the sword causes the same defilement whether it be through the hilt or the point.”
― Simone Weil, The Notebooks of Simone Weil

“We should not seize upon these mysteries as truths, for that is impossible, but recognize the subordination to these mysteries which we love of all that we seize upon as truths. The intelligence can recognize this subordination by feeling that the love of these mysteries is the source of conceptions which it can seize upon as truths. Such should be the relationship between faith and love.”
― Simone Weil, The Notebooks of Simone Weil

“The Gospels: God's perfection consists in non-intervention.”
― Simone Weil, The Notebooks of Simone Weil

“If we really love God, we necessarily think of him as being, amongst other things, the Soul of the World; for love is always connected with a body”
― Simone Weil, The Notebooks of Simone Weil

“Travail : sentir tout en soi-même l'existence du monde.”
― Simone Weil, The Notebooks of Simone Weil