"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."

Rating:

  rate this quote
Topic: none  help us select a topic for this quote

More quotes from: Simone Weil

• "A doctrine serves no purpose in itself, but it is indispensable to have one if ..."
• "A hurtful act is the transference to others of the degradation which we bear in ..."
• "A mind enclosed in language is in prison. "
• "A self-respecting nation is ready for anything, including war, except for a renunciation of its ..."
• "A test of what is real is that it is hard and rough. Joys are ..."
• "All sins are attempts to fill voids. "
• "An atheist may be simply one whose faith and love are concentrated on the impersonal ..."
• "Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be attained only by someone who ..."
• "Beauty always promises, but never gives anything. "
• "Charity. To love human beings in so far as they are nothing. That is to ..."
• "Culture is an instrument wielded by teachers to manufacture teachers, who, in their turn, will ..."
• "Difficult as it is really to listen to someone in affliction, it is just as ..."
• "Equality is the public recognition, effectively expressed in institutions and manners, of the principle that ..."
• "Every perfect life is a parable invented by God. "
• "Every time that I think of the crucifixion of Christ, I commit the sin of ..."
• "Evil being the root of mystery, pain is the root of knowledge. "
• "For when two beings who are not friends are near each other there is no ..."
• "Force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it, or thinks he does, as ..."
• "Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it ..."
• "Humanism was not wrong in thinking that truth, beauty, liberty, and equality are of infinite ..."
• "Humility is attentive patience. "
• "I am not a Catholic; but I consider the Christian idea, which has its roots ..."
• "I can, therefore I am. "
• "I suffer more from the humiliations inflicted by my country than from those inflicted on ..."
• "I would suggest that barbarism be considered as a permanent and universal human characteristic which ..."
• "If Germany, thanks to and his successors, were to enslave the European nations and destroy ..."
• "If Germany, thanks to Hitler and his successors, were to enslave the European nations and ..."

• "If we are suffering illness, poverty, or misfortune, we think we shall be satisfied on ..."
• "Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life. "
• "Imagination is always the fabric of social life and the dynamic of history. The influence ..."
• "In struggling against anguish one never produces serenity; the struggle against anguish only produces new ..."
• "In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what ..."
• "In the Church, considered as a social organism, the mysteries inevitably degenerate into beliefs. "
• "It is an eternal obligation toward the human being not to let him suffer from ..."
• "It is only the impossible that is possible for God. He has given over the ..."
• "Life does not need to mutilate itself in order to be pure. "
• "More than in any other performing arts the lack of respect for acting seems to ..."
• "Most works of art, like most wines, ought to be consumed in the district of ..."
• "Nothing can have as its destination anything other than its origin. The contrary idea, the ..."
• "Nothing is less instructive than a machine. "
• "One cannot imagine St. Francis of Assisi talking about rights. "
• "Oppression that is clearly inexorable and invincible does not give rise to revolt but to ..."
• "Petroleum is a more likely cause of international conflict than wheat. "
• "Purity is the power to contemplate defilement. "
• "Real genius is nothing else but the supernatural virtue of humility in the domain of ..."
• "The contemporary form of true greatness lies in a civilization founded on the spirituality of ..."
• "The danger is not lest the soul should doubt whether there is any bread, but ..."
• "The destruction of the past is perhaps the greatest of all crimes. "
• "The future is made of the same stuff as the present. "
• "The highest ecstasy is the attention at its fullest. "
• "The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say ..."
• "The most important part of teaching is to teach what it is to know. "
• "The mysteries of faith are degraded if they are made into an object of affirmation ..."

• "The only hope of socialism resides in those who have already brought about in themselves, ..."
• "The payment of debts is necessary for social order. The non-payment is quite equally necessary ..."
• "The poison of skepticism becomes, like alcoholism, tuberculosis, and some other diseases, much more virulent ..."
• "The proper method of philosophy consists in clearly conceiving the insoluble problems in all their ..."
• "The real stumbling-block of totalitarian rTgimes is not the spiritual need of men for freedom ..."
• "The role of the intelligence - that part of us which affirms and denies and ..."
• "There can be a true grandeur in any degree of submissiveness, because it springs from ..."
• "There is no detachment where there is no pain. And there is no pain endured ..."
• "Those who are unhappy have no need for anything in this world but people capable ..."
• "To be a hero or a heroine, one must give an order to oneself. "
• "To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human ..."
• "To get power over is to defile. To possess is to defile. "
• "To set up as a standard of public morality a notion which can neither be ..."
• "To want friendship is a great fault. Friendship ought to be a gratuitous joy, like ..."
• "Two prisoners whose cells adjoin communicate with each other by knocking on the wall. The ..."
• "We are like horses who hurt themselves as soon as they pull on their bits ..."
• "We can only know one thing about God - that he is what we are ..."
• "We must prefer real hell to an imaginary paradise. "
• "What a country calls its vital economic interests are not the things which enable its ..."
• "What a country calls its vital... interests are not things that help its people live, ..."
• "Whatever debases the intelligence degrades the entire human being. "
• "When a contradiction is impossible to resolve except by a lie, then we know that ..."
• "When once a certain class of people has been placed by the temporal and spiritual ..."
• "Who were the fools who spread the story that brute force cannot kill ideas? Nothing ..."
• "Why is it that reality, when set down untransposed in a book, sounds false? "
• "With no matter what human being, taken individually, I always find reasons for concluding that ..."