Simone Weil Quotes

We truly possess only what we are able to renounce; otherwise, we are simply possessed by our possessions.

If you ever want something badly, let it go. If it comes back to you, then it's yours forever. If it doesn't, then it was never yours to begin with.

This is going to be a hard task for you, first to attain and then to lose - because you can lose only something which you possess. If you don't possess it, how can you lose it?

It's not hard to own something. Or everything. You just have to know that it's yours, and then be willing to let it go.

No man can lose what he never had.

Complete possession is proved only by giving. All you are unable to give possesses you.

So how can you lose what you've never owned?

If you acquire things, you have to let them go.

We need, in love, to practice only this: letting each other go. For holding on comes easily; we do not need to learn it.

To renounce things is not to give them up. It is to acknowledge that all things go away.

No one owns anything. Anyone who has lost something they thought was theirs forever finally comes to realize that nothing really belongs to them. And if nothing belongs to me, then there's no point wasting my time looking after things that aren't mine.

We are like children building a sand castle. We embellish it with beautiful shells, bits of driftwood, and pieces of colored glass. The castle is ours, off limits to others. We’re willing to attack if others threaten to hurt it. Yet despite all our attachment, we know that the tide will inevitably come in and sweep the sand castle away. The trick is to enjoy it fully but without clinging, and when the time comes, let it dissolve back into the sea.

Naught is possessed, neither gold, nor land nor love, nor life, nor peace, nor even sorrow nor death, nor yet salvation. Say of nothing: It is mine. Say only: It is with me.

We only keep what we lose.

Let your greatest possession be the ability to let go of any possession, joyfully.

I saw that nothing was permanent. You don't want to possess anything that is dear to you because you might lose it.

Some of us think holding on makes us strong; but sometimes it is letting go.

Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours.

If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. And if they don't, they never were.

What pride to discover that nothing belongs to you - what a revelation.

I'm no Buddhist monk, and I can't say I'm in love with renunciation in itself, or traveling an hour or more to print out an article I've written, or missing out on the N.B.A. Finals. But at some point, I decided that, for me at least, happiness arose out of all I didn't want or need, not all I did.

Never love something so much that you can't let go of it.

As human beings we have a tendency when we like something to tie it up and make sure it's there for a long time. I've been working on being able to let things go. I don't think I ever want to buy property again.

I made up my mind that I would hold onto nothing, that I would expect nothing.

We can only lose what we have first claimed.