“To die for God is not a proof of faith in God. To die for an unknown and repulsive convict who is a victim of injustice, that is a proof of faith in God.”
“Everybody knows that really intimate conversation is only possible between two or three. As soon as there are six or seven, collective language begins to dominate.”
What I went through there [In the factory] marked me in so lasting a manner that still today when any human being, whoever he may be and in whatever circumstances, speaks to me without brutality, I cannot help having the impression that there must be a mistake and that unfortunately the mistake will in all probability disappear. There I received forever the mark of a slave, like the branding of the red-hot iron the Romans put on the foreheads of their most despised slaves. Since then I have always regarded myself as a slave.
Simone Weil, “Spiritual Autobiography”, in Waiting for God, 1942.
“Sometimes, when I think of what is going on in the world, I wonder why am I writing? The answer is that one simply has to work. Work and go on working. Work and help everyone who deserves it. Work even though at times it feels like so much wasted effort. Work as a form of protest. For one’s impulse has to be to cry out every day one wakes up and is confronted by misery and injustice of every kind: I protest! I protest! I protest!”
—Federico García Lorca
“To be a man is to be responsible: to be ashamed of miseries you did not cause; to be proud of your comrades’ victories; to be aware, when setting one stone, that you are building a world.”
—Antoine de Saint–Exupéry
“Warmth of heart, impulsiveness, pity are not enough. The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say to him: ‘What are you going through?’ It is a recognition that the sufferer exists, not only as a unit in a collection, or a specimen from the social category labeled ‘unfortunate,’ but as a man, exactly like us, who was one day stamped with a special mark by affliction.”
“Duty towards the human being as such–that alone is eternal.”
—Simone Weil
“Only two principles matter: never live of hopes only, but never stop believing that everything you do may help.”
—Italo Calvino
“We’re each of us alone, to be sure. What can you do but hold your hand out in the dark?”
