Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Simone Weil. Selected quotes.

In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock!


One cannot imagine St. Francis of Assisi talking about rights.

If Germany, thanks to Hitler and his successors, were to enslave the European nations and destroy most of the treasures of their past, future historians would certainly pronounce that she had civilized Europe.

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.

A work of art has an author and yet, when it is perfect, it has something which is anonymous about it.

Petroleum is a more likely cause of international conflict than wheat. (premonitory!)

Most works of art, like most wines, ought to be consumed in the district of their fabrication.

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

The future is made of the same stuff as the present.

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.

What a country calls its vital... interests are not things that help its people live, but things that help it make war.

La beauté séduit la chair pour obtenir la permission de passer jusqu'à l'âme.

La religion en tant que source de consolation est un obstacle à la véritable foi, et en ce sens l'athéisme est une purification.

Le mot de révolution est un mot pour lequel on tue, pour lequel on meurt, pour lequel on envoie les masses populaires à la mort, mais qui n'a aucun contenu.

Dieu ne juge pas : par lui les êtres se jugent.

Le chrétien est un mauvais païen, converti par un mauvais juif.

Accepter le mal qu'on nous fait comme remède à celui que nous avons fait.

La politique m'apparaît comme une sinistre rigolade. 

Impossible de pardonner à qui nous a fait du mal, si ce mal nous abaisse. Il faut penser qu'il ne nous a pas abaissé, mais a révélé notre vrai niveau.