Quote

One does not play Bach without having done scales. But neither does one play a scale merely for the sake of the scale.

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
Neither
Happiness
Doe
Without
Bach
Play
Scale
Done
Scales
Life
Merely
Sake

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A man thinks he is dying for his country, said Anatole France, but he is dying for a few industrialists. But even that is saying too much. What one dies for is not even so substantial and tangible as an industrialist.
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Compassion directed to oneself is humility.
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The beautiful is the experimental proof that the incarnation is possible.
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More than in any other performing arts the lack of respect for acting seems to spring from the fact that every layman considers himself a valid critic.
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Academic work is one of those fields which contain a pearl so precious that it is worth while to sell all our possessions, keeping nothing for ourselves, in order to be able to acquire it.
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Oppression that is clearly inexorable and invincible does not give rise to revolt but to submission.
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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 not a distance, it is a turning of our gaze in the wrong direction.
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Why is it that reality, when set down untransposed in a book, sounds false?
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If a young girl is being forced into a brothel she will not talk about her rights. In such a situation the word would sound ludicrously inadequate.
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All those who possess in its pure state the love of their neighbour and the acceptance of the order of the world, inclucing affliction-all those, even should they live and die to all appearances atheists, are surely saved.
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A man whose mind feels that it is captive would prefer to blind himself to the fact. But if he hates falsehood, he will not do so and in that case he will have to suffer a lot. He will beat his head against the wall until he faints. He will come to again
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Love consents to all and commands only those who consent. Love is abdication. God is abdication.
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I am not a Catholic but I consider the Christian idea, which has its roots in Greek thought and in the course of the centuries has nourished all of our European civilization, as something that one cannot renounce without becoming degraded.
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