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

— Simone Weil

Beauty always promises, but never gives anything.

— Simone Weil

Belief in immortality is harmful because it is not in our power to conceive of the soul as really incorporeal. So this belief is in fact a belief in the prolongation of life, and it robs death of its purpose.

— Simone Weil

Charity. To love human beings in so far as they are nothing. That is to love them as God does.

— Simone Weil

Education -- whether its object be children or adults, individuals or an entire people, or even oneself -- consists in creating motives. To show what is beneficial, what is obligatory, what is good -- that is the task of education. Education concerns itself with the motives for effective action. For no action is ever carried out in the absence of motives capable of supplying the indispensable amount of energy for its execution.

— Simone Weil

Equality is the public recognition, effectively expressed in institutions and manners, of the principle that an equal degree of attention is due to the needs of all human beings.

— Simone Weil

Every perfect life is a parable invented by God.

— Simone Weil

Evil being the root of mystery, pain is the root of knowledge.

— Simone Weil

Fashion exerts more power in science than it does on the shape of hats.

— Simone Weil

Fire destroys that which feeds it.

— Simone Weil