Memorable Quotations: Simone Weil

Simone Weil (1909–43) was a French philosopher and mystic. Intellectually exceptional from childhood, she became a secondary-school teacher, wrote for socialist and Communist journals, and worked in Spain during the Civil War. After a powerful mystical event in 1938 she became a practicing Roman Catholic. Her spiritual and social-philosophic writings were collected after her death, notably in Waiting for God (1951) and The Need for Roots (1952).