At the very best, a mind enclosed in language is in prison. It is limited to the number of relations which words can make simultaneously present to it; and remains in ignorance of thoughts which involve the combination of a greater number. These thoughts are outside language, they are unformulable, although they are perfectly rigorous and clear and although every one of the relations they involve is capable of precise expression in words. So the mind moves in a closed space of partial truth, which may be larger or smaller, without ever being able so much as to glance at what is outside.

~ Simone Weil

Simone Weil Language Philosophy 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

Simone Weil Belief Body Death Dying Eternity Faith Gravity And Grace Immortality Life Purpose Religion Simone Weil Soul

To love purely is to consent to distance, it is to adore the distance between ourselves and that which we love.

~ Simone Weil

Simone Weil Distance Friendship Love Object Pure Love Relationships Simone Weil Subject

238. I want you to know, if you ever read this, there was a time when I would rather have had you by my side than any one of these words; I would rather have had you by my side than all the blue in the world.239. But now you are talking as if love were a consolation. Simone Weil warned otherwise. “Love is not consolation,” she wrote. “It is light.”240. All right then, let me try to rephrase. When I was alive, I aimed to be a student not of longing but of light.

~ Maggie Nelson

Maggie Nelson Blue Bluets Color Colour Light Love Maggie Nelson Nelson Simone Weil Weil