Simone Weil, (1910-1943), French Philosopher, Mystic Quotes

One of the indispensable foods for the human soul is liberty.

The role of the intelligence -- that part of us which affirms and denies and formulates opinions is merely to submit.

Those who love a cause are those who love the life which has to be led in order to serve it.

Friendship ought to be a gratuitous joy, like the joys afforded by art.

Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes this void.

If we are suffering illness, poverty, or misfortune, we think we shall be satisfied on the day it ceases. But there too, we know it is false; so soon as one has got used to not suffering, one wants something else.

When science, art, literature, and philosophy are simply the manifestation of personality they are on a level where glorious and dazzling achievements are possible, which can make a man's name live for thousands of years. But above this level, far above.

I am not a Catholic; but I consider the Christian idea, which has its roots in Greek thought and in the course of the centuries, has nourished all of our European civilization, as something that one cannot renounce without becoming degraded.

To write the lives of the great, in separating them from their works, necessarily ends by above all stressing their pettiness, because it is in their work that they have put the best of themselves.

Fire destroys that which feeds it.