Simone Weil Quotations | Page 2

The destruction of the past is perhaps the greatest of all crimes.

To want friendship is a great fault. Friendship ought to be a gratuitous joy, like the joys afforded by art or life.

Truth is sought not because it is truth but because it is good.

The recognition of human wretchedness is difficult for whoever is rich and powerful because he is almost invincibly led to believe that he is something. It is equally difficult for the man in miserable circumstances because he is almost invincibly led to believe that the rich and powerful man is something.

Friendship is a miracle by which a person consents to view from a certain distance, without coming any nearer, the very being who is as necessary to him as food.

I also am other than what I imagine myself to be. To know this is forgiveness.

At the centre of the human heart is the longing for an absolute good, a longing which is always there and is never appeased by any object in this world.

The simultaneous existence of opposite virtues in the soul like pincers to catch hold of God.

Two prisoners whose cells adjoin communicate with each other by knocking on the wall. The wall is the thing which separates them but is also their means of communication. It is the same with us and God. Every separation is a link.

To wish to escape from solitude is cowardice. Friendship is not to be sought, not to be dreamed, not to be desired; it is to be exercised (it is a virtue).