Simone Weil (1909 – 1943) was a French philosopher, mystic, and activist. She became a teacher and taught philosophy intermittently throughout the 1930’s. Most of the work published in her lifetime was in the form of short essays for small political and literary journals, addressed to particular audiences. Such writings form only a small part of her collected work, and much of that which is most widely known was published posthumously. In the 1950’s and 1960’s her work became famous in continental Europe and throughout the English-speaking world.
Quotes by Simone Weil…
Every time that a fragment of inexpressible truth passes into words that, although they are not able to contain the truth that inspired them, have by their order a perfect correspondence with truth that furnishes support to every spirit that wants to find it.
We do not enter into the truth without having passed through our own nothingness; without having sojourned for a long time in a state of extreme and total humiliation.
If we turn our minds towards the good, it is impossible that little by little the whole soul will not be attracted thereto in spite of itself.
Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.
Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer.
The most commonplace truth when it floods the whole soul, is like a revelation.
We do not have to understand new things, but by dint of patience, effort and method to come to understand with our whole self the truths which are evident.
Attention alone — that attention which is so full that the ‘I’ disappears — is required of me. I have to deprive all that I call ‘I’ of the light of my attention and turn it on to that which cannot be conceived.
In general we must not wish for the disappearance of any of our troubles, but grace to transform them.
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.