I must not forget that at certain times when my headaches were raging I had an intense longing to make another human being suffer by hitting him in exactly the same part of his forehead.
Simone Weil, Gravity & Grace
Tag: simone weil
[The void is] the anguished experience of lack of balance. We have been unjustly treated, insulted, humiliated: we want to get our own back, to get even, if need be to hurt innocent people as we have been hurt.
Iris Murdoch, Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (New York: Penguin Books, 1992), 502.
The vulnerability of precious things is beautiful because vulnerability is a mark of existence.
Simone Weil
To say of Christ, ‘I will never deny thee,’ was already to betray him.
Simone Weil
Simone Weil from Gravity and Grace
I can easily imagine that [God] loves that perspective of creation that
can only be seen from the point where I am. But I act as a screen.
I must withdraw so that he might see it.
I must withdraw so that God might enter into contact with the
beings whom chance places in my path and so that he might love me.
My presence is indiscreet, as though I found myself between two lov-
ers or two friends. I am not the maiden who awaits her betrothed but
the unwelcome third who is with the two lovers and who ought to go
away so that they can really be together.
If I only knew how to disappear, there would be a perfect union of
love between God and the earth I tread, the sea I hear …
That I might disappear so that those things that I see may become
perfectly beautiful from the fact that they are no longer things that I
see.
I do not in the least wish that this created world should no longer
be perceptible, but that it should no longer be me to whom it is per-
ceptible. To me it cannot tell its secret which is too high. That I might
leave, then the creator and the creature will exchange their secrets.
To see a landscape as it is when I am not there …
The very being of man (both external and internal) is the deepest communication. To be means to communicate. Absolute death (non-being) is the state of being unheard, unrecognized, unremembered…. To be means to be for another, and through the other, for oneself
Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace
ELBIETA KOTKOWSKA from “Simone Weil’s Questions about God”
God gave me being in order that I should give it back to him. It is like one of those traps whereby the characters are tested in fairy stories and tales on initiation. If I accept this gift it is bad and fatal; its virtue becomes apparent through my refusal of it. God allows me to exist outside himself. It is for me to refuse this authorization
Simone Weil
Humility is the refusal to exist outside God. It is the queen of virtues.
Simone Weil
Our existence is made up only of his (God) waiting for our acceptance not to exist. He is perpetually begging from us that existence which he gives. He gives it to us in order to beg it from us.
Simone Weil
His love for us is love for himself through us. Thus, he who gives us our being loves in us the acceptance of not being.
Simone Weil
We are a part which has to imitate the whole.
Simone Weil
Little Bristling Soul 