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What a country calls its vital economic interests are not the things which enable its citizens to live, but the things which enable it to make war. Petrol is more likely than wheat to be a cause of international conflict.

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
War
Conflict
Petrol
Live
Citizens
Wheat
Country
Cause
Enable
Make
Economy
Vital
Things
Economic
Calls
Causes
Interests
Interest
Likely
Peace
International

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Christians ought to suspect that affliction is the very essence of creation. To be a created thing is not necessarily to be afflicted, but it is necessarily to be exposed to affliction. ... Affliction is the surest sign that God wishes to be loved by us it is the most precious evidence of His tenderness.
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You could not be born at a better period than the present, when we have lost everything.
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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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The extreme greatness of Christianity lies in the fact that it does not seek a supernatural remedy for suffering but a supernatural use for it.
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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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Uprooting is by far the most dangerous of the ills of human society, for it perpetuates itself.
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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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Love of God is pure when joy and suffering inspire an equal degree of gratitude.
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The Hebrews took for their idol, not something made of metal or wood, but a race, a nation, something just as earthly. Their religion is essentially inseparable from such idolatry, because of the notion of the 'chosen people'.
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Equality is the public recognition, effectively expressed in institutions and manners, of the principle that an equal degree of attention is due to the needs of all human beings.
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I only read what I am hungry for at the moment when I have an appetite for it, and then I do not read, I eat.
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In this world we live in a mixture of time and eternity. Hell would be pure time.
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Punishment is a vital need of the human soul.
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Only an indirect method is effective. We do nothing if we have not first drawn back.
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To be a hero or a heroine, one must give an order to oneself.
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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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An imaginary perfection is automatically at the same level as I who imagine it neither higher nor lower.
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Death. An instantaneous state, without past or future. Indispensable for entering eternity.
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Art has no immediate future, because all art is collective and there is no more collective life.
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We must prefer real hell to an imaginary paradise.
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