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Art is the symbol of the two noblest human efforts: to construct and to refrain from destruction.
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
Artist
Construct
Art
Refrain
Two
Constructs
Human
Symbol
Humans
Efforts
Symbols
Destruction
Effort
Noblest
More quotes by Simone Weil
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.
Simone Weil
One might lay down as a postulate: All conceptions of God which are incompatible with a movement of pure charity are false. All other conceptions of him, in varying degree, are true.
Simone Weil
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.
Simone Weil
Bourgeois society is infected by monomania: the monomania of accounting. For it, the only thing that has value is what can be counted in francs and centimes. It never hesitates to sacrifice human life to figures which look well on paper, such as national budgets or industrial balance sheets.
Simone Weil
Everything beautiful has a mark of eternity.
Simone Weil
The contemporary form of true greatness lies in a civilization founded upon the spirituality of work.
Simone Weil
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.
Simone Weil
Stars and blossoming fruit-trees: utter permanence and extreme fragility give an equal sense of eternity.
Simone Weil
We do not obtain the most precious gifts by going in search of them but by waiting for them.
Simone Weil
Creation is an act of love and it is perpetual.
Simone Weil
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.
Simone Weil
A hurtful act is the transference to others of the degradation which we bear in ourselves.
Simone Weil
As soon as men know that they can kill without fear of punishment or blame, they kill or at least they encourage killers with approving smiles.
Simone Weil
Sin is not a distance, it is a turning of our gaze in the wrong direction.
Simone Weil
I also am other than what I imagine myself to be. To know this is forgiveness.
Simone Weil
Time's violence rends the soul, by the rent eternity enters.
Simone Weil
It is not religion but revolution which is the opium of the people.
Simone Weil
Evil is neither suffering nor sin it is both at the same time, it is something common to them both. For they are linked together sin makes us suffer and suffering makes us evil, and this indissoluble complex of suffering and sin is the evil in which we are submerged against our will, and to our horror.
Simone Weil
The development of the faculty of attention forms the real object and almost the sole interest of studies.
Simone Weil
The right to kill: supposing the life of X ... were linked with our own so that the two deaths had to be simultaneous, should we still wish him to die? If with our whole body and soul we desire life and if nevertheless without lying, we can reply 'yes'> then we have the right to kill.
Simone Weil
