[Simone Weil] continued giving her comrades her lucid and sad reflections, completely free of the blur of opinion, clear of the complacency of illusion, and untouched by the concerns of personal ambition. –Gabriella Fiori, Simone Weil:…
It is perhaps even more useful to contemplate our stupidity than our sin. Method of investigation— as soon as one has arrived at any position, try to find in what sense the contrary is true….
“Nothing is more beautiful than Plato; such reading, for those who are able to understand him, can give one happiness even in the most miserable circumstances.” –Simone Weil
Something mysterious in this universe is an accomplice of those who love only the good.
“Do you look at the stars a lot? Do you know them? Plato said that sight is not truly precious unless it helps us to know the stars, the planets, the moon, and the sun….
Furnace. The first evening, about 5 o’clock, the pain from the extreme heat, exhaustion, and headaches make me completely lose control of my movements. I can’t lower the furnace damper. A coppersmith jumps up and…
The goal of human life is constructing an architecture of the soul. –Simone Weil, quoted in Gabriella Fiori, Simone Weil: An Intellectual Biography
A very Jewish soul. There was something of the Talmud in her. Very stringent in her logic. 206 [W]hat most struck me in her were her nobility, her straightforwardness, the purity of her soul. 218…
… the development of the faculty of attention forms the real object and almost the sole interest of studies. … All tasks that really call upon the power of attention are interesting for the same reason…
I have often thought that there has rarely passed a life of which a judicious and faithful narrative would not be useful. For, not only every man has, in the mighty mass of the world,…