82 Inspirational Quotes By Simone Weil That Will Make You Believe In Yourself
Scholars like T.S. Eliot called her “a woman of genius, of a kind of genius akin to that of the saints”. And the world knows her as Simone Weil, the philosopher, social activist and probably one of the greatest mystic of all times. However, many of us will be surprised to know that she grew up in an agnostic environment. But she was drawn towards mysticism and during her life she had several experiences which made her believe in the entity called God. In a letter to Father Perrin, who was a friend to her, this is what she said about those encounters:
“…I was suffering from splitting headaches; each sound hurt me like a blow; by an extreme effort of concentration I was able to rise above this wretched flesh, to leave it to suffer by itself, heaped up in a corner, and to find a pure and perfect joy in the unimaginable beauty of the chanting and the words…
Until last September I had never once prayed in all my life, at least not in the literal sense of the word. I had never said any words to God, either out loud or mentally. Last summer, doing Greek with T-, I went through the Our Father word for word in Greek. We promised each other to learn it by heart. I do not think he ever did so, but some weeks later, as I was turning over the pages of the Gospel, I said to myself that since I had promised to do this thing and it was good, I ought to do it…”
Read on and get drenched in philosophy and mysticism which is reflected in her quotes compiled herein.
All sins are attempts to fill voids.
Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.
A beautiful woman looking at her image in the mirror may very well believe the image is herself. An ugly woman knows it is not.
Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.
Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be obtained only by someone who is detached.
Love is not consolation. It is light.
Human existence is so fragile a thing and exposed to such dangers that I cannot love without trembling.
To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.
If we go down into ourselves, we find that we possess exactly what we desire.
Everything beautiful has a mark of eternity.
Love of God is pure when joy and suffering inspire an equal degree of gratitude.
We have to endure the discordance between imagination and fact. It is better to say, “I am suffering,” than to say, “This landscape is ugly.
The sea is not less beautiful in our eyes because we know that sometimes ships are wrecked by it.
Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.
Compassion directed toward oneself is true humility.
Every sin is an attempt to fly from emptiness.
We must not wish for the disappearance of our troubles but for the grace to transform them.
True definition of science: the study of the beauty of the world.
The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like the condemned man who is proud of his large cell.
Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life.
He who has not God in himself cannot feel His absence.
A mind enclosed in language is in prison.
Humility is attentive patience.
I can, therefore I am.
In struggling against anguish one never produces serenity; the struggle against anguish only produces new forms of anguish.
Even if our efforts of attention seem for years to be producing no result, one day a light that is in exact proportion to them will flood the soul.
The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say, "What are you going through?
Art is the symbol of the two noblest human efforts: to construct and to refrain from destruction.
A science which does not bring us nearer to God is worthless.
We cannot take a step toward the heavens. God crosses the universe and comes to us.
