Simone Weil

More from Simone Weil

• Only he who has measured the dominion of force, and knows how not to respect it, is capable of love and justice.

  The Iliad or The Poem of Force (1940-1941), p. 192

  • Justice
  • Love
  • Power

• One of the most exquisite pleasures of human love — to serve the loved one without his knowing it — is only possible, as regards the love of God, through atheism.

  Last Notebook (1942) p. 84

  • Atheism
  • Love

• Art is the symbol of the two noblest human efforts: to construct and to refrain from destruction.

  The Pre-War Notebook (1933-1939), published in First and Last Notebooks (1970) edited by Richard Rees

  • Art

All 22 quotes from Simone Weil

Popular quotes

• No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent.

  John Donne1572–1631No Man Is an Island (1624), Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1624), Meditation 17In context

• I came, I saw, I conquered.

  Julius Caesar100–44 BCInscription on the triumphal wagon reported in The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius, as translated by Robert Graves (1957).

  • Success

• The unexamined life is not worth living.

  Socrates470–399 BCThe Apology of Socrates (399 BC)

  • Philosophy