Weil, Simone

"To love purely is to love without expectation of return."

"Necessity teaches us what is essential and strips away the superfluous."

"The worker's body becomes an instrument, and the worker ceases to be a person."

"Time is not a line but a labyrinth through which we wander."

"All modern progress is a reduction of the human to its functions."

"Patience is the virtue of those who have learned to wait for the eternal."

"We diminish ourselves by demanding recognition from others."

"The supernatural is not beyond nature but the deepest nature of things."

"To read is to enter into conversation with the wisest minds."

"Affliction isolates us, but grace can reunite us with humanity."

"The greatest deception is to imagine we can improve the world through force."

"Music is the language the soul recognizes but cannot explain."

"Gratitude is the only response proportionate to existence itself."

"We are slaves to our habits, and freedom lies in the examination of them."

"The mind's restlessness is a sign of its spiritual malnutrition."

"Only the truly humble can perceive the truth without distorting it."

"Nature is God's first language, and those who cannot read it are illiterate in the most profound sense."

"To work with integrity means to work as though for eternity."

"Death is not an event in life but its constant shadow and final meaning."

"The imagination is more important than knowledge because it reveals what might be."

"A friendship without reciprocal weakness cannot be true."

"We must learn to desire the difficult and the painful as the only things worth having."

"Language often obscures truth rather than revealing it."

"The worker who thinks is already beginning to resist exploitation."

"Beauty in the world speaks to a beauty in the soul that recognizes it."

"To imagine another's suffering is the beginning of moral action."

"We are most ourselves when we have abandoned all pretense."

"The unconditioned soul is the only instrument capable of perceiving truth."

"Adversity strips away the false and reveals what remains essential."

"The mind of the modern worker has been colonized by utility."