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The only way into truth is through one's own annihilation through dwelling a long time in a state of extreme and total humiliation.

Simone Weil

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Simone Weil
Age: 34 †
Born: 1909
Born: February 3
Died: 1943
Died: August 24
Autobiographer
Diarist
French Resistance Fighter
Philosopher
Poet
Teacher
Trade Unionist
Translator
Writer
Paris
France
Simone Adolphine Weil
States
Dwelling
Long
Humiliation
Way
Extreme
Time
Extremes
Total
State
House
Truth
Annihilation

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The speed with which bureaucracy has invaded almost every branch of human activity is something astounding once one thinks about it.
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The same suffering is much harder to bear for a high motive than for a base one. The people [during World War II] who stood motionless, from one to eight in the morning, for the sake of having an egg, would have found it very difficult to do in order to save a human life.
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prayer consists of attention. It is the orientation of all the attention of which the soul is capable towards God. The quality of the attention counts for much in the quality of the prayer. Warmth of heart cannot make up for it.
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The demonstrable correlation of opposites is an image of the transcendental correlation of contradictories.
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Science is voiceless it is the scientists who talk.
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A hurtful act is the transference to others of the degradation which we bear in ourselves.
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The contemporary form of true greatness lies in a civilization founded upon the spirituality of work.
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The right to kill: supposing the life of X ... were linked with our own so that the two deaths had to be simultaneous, should we still wish him to die? If with our whole body and soul we desire life and if nevertheless without lying, we can reply 'yes'> then we have the right to kill.
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Every sin is an attempt to fly from emptiness.
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To want friendship is a great fault. Friendship ought to be a gratuitous joy, like the joys afforded by art or life.
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The real stumbling-block of totalitarian regimes is not the spiritual need of men for freedom of thought it is men's inability to stand the physical and nervous strain of a permanent state of excitement, except during a few years of their youth.
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Compassion directed to oneself is humility.
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The simultaneous existence of opposite virtues in the soul like pincers to catch hold of God.
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The difference between more or less intelligent men is like the difference between criminals condemned to life imprisonment in smaller or larger cells. The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like a condemned man who is proud of his large cell.
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Nothing can have as its destination anything other than its origin. The contrary idea, the idea of progress, is poison.
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We can only know one thing about God - that he is what we are not. Our wretchedness alone is an image of this. The more we contemplate it, the more we contemplate him.
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Every being cries out in silence to be read differently. Do not be indifferent to these cries.
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The joy of learning is as indispensable in study as breathing is in running. Where it is lacking there are no real students, but only poor caricatures of apprentices who, at the end of their apprenticeship, will not even have a trade.
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Beauty captivates the flesh in order to obtain permission to pass right through to the soul. . . . When the feeling for beauty happens to be associated with the sight of some human being, the transference of love is made possible, at any rate in an illusory manner. But it is all the beauty of the world, it is universal beauty, for which we yearn.
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