A Quote by Simone Weil

To get power over is to defile. To possess is to defile.

Simone Weil

Quote Topics

Get Over Possess Power

Quote Author

Simone Weil
French - Philosopher
February 3, 1909 - August 24, 1943

I have not yet begun to defile myself.

Doc Holliday

Knowledge cannot defile, nor consequently the books, if the will and conscience be not defiled.

John Milton

Out yonder they may curse, revile, and torture one another, defile all the human instincts, make a shambles of creation (if it were in their power), but here, no, here, it is unthinkable, here there is abiding peace, the peace of God, and the serene security created by a handful of good neighbors living at one with the creature world.

Henry Miller

When you defile the pleasant streams, And the wild bird's abiding place, You massacre a million dreams, And cast your spittle in God's face

John Drinkwater

I won't defile my blessings by imagining that I deserve them. Until every human receives the dignity I casually enjoy, I pray my heart aches with tension and my belly rumbles for injustice.

Jen Hatmaker

It is useless to subdue the flesh by abstinence, unless one gives up his irregular life, and abandons vices which defile his soul.

Benedict of Nursia

To make our morality center on forbidden acts is to defile the imagination and to introduce into our judgments of our fellow men a secret element of gusto.

Robert Louis Stevenson

To think there are men who dare so defile a church, a sacred sanctuary dedicated to God. We have to hold up our skirts and walk tiptoe, so covered is the floor, the aisle and pews, with the dark shower of tobacco juice.

Mary Boykin Chesnut

The division of the spoils between the victors will also provide employment for a powerful office, whose doorsteps the greedy adventurers and jealous concession hunters of twenty or thirty nations will crowd and defile.

John Maynard Keynes

I can forgive even that wrong of wrongs, Those undreamt accidents that have made me Seeing that Fame has perished this long while, Being but a part of ancient ceremony Notorious, till all my priceless things Are but a post the passing dogs defile.

William Butler Yeats

Sacred interpreter of human thought, How few respect or use thee as they ought! But all shall give account of every wrong, Who dare dishonor or defile the tongue; Who prostitute it in the cause of vice, Or sell their glory at a market-price!

William Cowper

Man, do not pride yourself on your superiority to the animals, for they are without sin, while you, with all your greatness, you defile the earth wherever you appear and leave an ignoble trail behind you -- and that is true, alas, for almost every one of us!

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Power is very much like the wind. It comes and goes; no one really owns it. People are foolish enough to think they possess power. You don't possess power, power possesses you. Power uses you.

Frederick Lenz

We shall have to pass through many a valley, many a narrow defile. Many will grow tired on the way. Of course they will mostly be those who have no reason to do so.

Heinrich Himmler

The most irresistible charm of youth is its bubbling enthusiasm. Youth sees no darkness ahead - no defile that has no outlet - it forgets that there is such a thing as failure in the world and believes that mankind has been waiting all these centuries for him to come and be the liberator of truth and energy and beauty.