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

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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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...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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Official history is a matter of believing murderers on their own word.
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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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A self-respecting nation is ready for anything, including war, except for a renunciation of its option to make war.
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Sin is nothing else but the failure to recognize human wretchedness.
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Because no other could do it, he himself went to the greatest possible distance, the infinite distance. This infinite distance between God and God, this supreme tearing apart, this incomparable agony, this marvel of love, is the crucifixion. Nothing can be further from God than that which has been made accursed.
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Most works of art, like most wines, ought to be consumed in the district of their fabrication.
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We cannot take a single step toward heaven. It is not in our power to travel in a vertical direction. If however we look heavenward for a long time, God comes and takes us up.
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Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions reality can be attained only by someone who is detached.
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Modern life is given over to immoderation. Immoderation invades everything: actions and thought, public and private life.
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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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