"We do not “look” at something or someone; we “eat” it: we are like “cannibals” consuming the world for our own benefit. “The only people who have any hope of salvation are those who occasionally stop and look for a time, instead of eating.” Here we have Weil’s version of changing from a position of egocentrism to egolessness. … Weil is claiming that it all starts with paying attention to the other—any other—as the way to form our appropriate stance toward the world and all its creatures. Her essay titled “Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God” joins what appear to be opposites—a child’s concentration on working on a math problem and training for loving God. From her own earliest days, she saw the value of studying math and science, disciplines that demanded an openness and patience to a subject outside of oneself and whose truth did not rest with one’s own interpretation."

"A metaphor is a word used in an unfamiliar context to give us a new insight; a good metaphor moves us to see our ordinary world in an extraordinary way."

"Irony is jesting hidden behind gravity. Humor is gravity concealed behind the jest."

"The truest worship is a life; All dreaming we resign; We lay our offerings at Thy feet, — Our lives, O God, are Thine!"

"Christianity depends finally on consciousness and experience. From other departments of the mind she may retire at times or seem to, but never from this. Sitting here, if allowed to, on the throne of the soul, she occasionally walks into the other rooms and sets them in order; and accustomed lo her presence, sooner or later the soul finds every department flooded with her light."

"Morals are concerned with what aids or impedes the fulfillment of basic human needs."

"In ancient Israel and Rome the judge had appeared as a stand-in for the divine, and corruption was a blinding of the representative of the divine."

"The core of the concept of a bribe is an inducement improperly influencing the performance of a public function meant to be gratuitously exercised."

"It were better that Ten Suspected Witches should escape, than that one Innocent Person should be Condemned."

"Drink is in itself a good creature of God, but the abuse of drink is from Satan."