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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
State
House
Truth
Annihilation
States
Dwelling
Long
Humiliation
Way
Extreme
Time
Extremes
Total

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Just as the power of the sun is the only force in the natural universe that causes a plant to grow against gravity, so the grace of God is the only force in the spiritual universe that causes a person to grow against the gravity of their own ego.
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To us, men of the West, a very strange thing happened at the turn of the century without noticing it, we lost science, or at least the thing that had been called by that name for the last four centuries. What we now have in place of it is something different, radically different, and we don't know what it is. Nobody knows what it is.
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Stars and blossoming fruit-trees: utter permanence and extreme fragility give an equal sense of eternity.
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There is no detachment where there is no pain. And there is no pain endured without hatred or lying unless detachment is present too.
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Only an indirect method is effective. We do nothing if we have not first drawn back.
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Punishment is a vital need of the human soul.
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Only he who has measured the dominion of force, and knows how not to respect it, is capable of love andjustice.
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Truth is one, but error is manifold.
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Man alone can enslave man.
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Love: To feel with one's whole self the existence of another being.
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There are two atheisms of which one is a purification of the notion of God.
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Whenever a human being, through the commission of a crime, has become exiled from good, he needs to be reintegrated with it through suffering. The suffering should be inflicted with the aim of bringing the soul to recognize freely some day that its infliction was just.
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Moreover, nothing is so rare as to see misfortune fairly portrayed the tendency is either to treat the unfortunate person as though catastrophe were his natural vocation, or to ignore the effects of misfortune on the soul, to assume, that is, that the soul can suffer and remain unmarked by it, can fail, in fact, to be recast in misfortune's image.
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Time's violence rends the soul, by the rent eternity enters.
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We are like horses who hurt themselves as soon as they pull on their bits - and we bow our heads. We even lose consciousness of the situation, we just submit. Any re-awakening of thought is then painful.
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...nothing on earth can stop man from feeling himself born for liberty. Never, whatever may happen, can he accept servitude for he is a thinking creature.
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Art is the symbol of the two noblest human efforts: to construct and to refrain from destruction.
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Compassion directed to oneself is humility.
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The notion of rights is linked with the notion of sharing out, of exchange, of measured quantity. It has a commercial flavor, essentially evocative of legal claims and arguments. Rights are always asserted in a tone of contention and when this tone is adopted, it must rely upon force in the background, or else it will be laughed at.
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