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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.

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
Joy
Art
Gratuitous
Great
Afforded
Life
Joys
Like
Fault
Faults
Friendship
Ought

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For when two beings who are not friends are near each other there is no meeting, and when friends are far apart there is no separation.
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Justice consists in seeing that no harm is done to men. Whenever a man cries inwardly: 'Why am I being hurt?' harm is being done to him. He is often mistaken when he tries to define the harm, and why and by whom it is being inflicted on him. But the cry itself is infallible.
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The destruction of the past is perhaps the greatest of all crimes.
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It is not the cause for which men took up arms that makes a victory more just or less, it is the order that is established when arms have been laid down.
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Love consents to all and commands only those who consent. Love is abdication. God is abdication.
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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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Nothing can have as its destination anything other than its origin. The contrary idea, the idea of progress, is poison.
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The only great spirit of our time.
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When an apprentice gets hurt, or complains of being tired, the workmen and peasants have this fine expression: It is the trade entering his body. Each time that we have some pain to go through, we can say to ourselves quite truly that it is the universe, the order and beauty of the world, and the obedience of God that are entering our body.
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The proper method of philosophy consists in clearly conceiving the insoluble problems in all their insolubility and then in simply contemplating them, fixedly and tirelessly, year after year, without any hope, patiently waiting.
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It is precisely those artists and writers who are most inclined to think of their art as the manifestation of their personality who are in fact the most in bondage to public taste.
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the instruments of power - arms, gold, machines, magical or technical secrets - always exist independently of him who disposes of them, and can be taken up by others. Consequently all power is unstable.
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The development of the faculty of attention forms the real object and almost the sole interest of studies.
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A mind enclosed in language is in prison.
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School children and students who love God should never say: For my part I like mathematics I like French I like Greek. They should learn to like all these subjects, because all of them develop that faculty of attention which, directed toward God, is the very substance of prayer.
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one is never got out of the cave, one comes out of it.
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Meditation on the chance which led to the meeting of my mother and father is even more salutary than meditation on death.
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We must prefer real hell to an imaginary paradise.
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Religion is a form of nourishment. It is difficult to appreciate the flavor and food-value of something one has never eaten.
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Creation is an act of love and it is perpetual.
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