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The real stumbling-block of totalitarian regimes is not the spiritual need of men for freedom of thought it is men's inability to stand the physical and nervous strain of a permanent state of excitement, except during a few years of their youth.

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
Spiritual
Permanent
Thought
Nervous
Totalitarian
States
Physical
Stumbling
Need
Except
Regimes
Real
Youth
Inability
Needs
Stand
Strain
Years
State
Excitement
Men
Freedom
Block

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Renunciation is submission to time.
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A mind enclosed in language is in prison.
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We should do only those righteous actions which we cannot stop ourselves from doing.
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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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Art is the symbol of the two noblest human efforts: to construct and to refrain from destruction.
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Beauty captivates the flesh in order to obtain permission to pass right through to the soul. . . . When the feeling for beauty happens to be associated with the sight of some human being, the transference of love is made possible, at any rate in an illusory manner. But it is all the beauty of the world, it is universal beauty, for which we yearn.
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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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Every atheist is an idolater- unless he is worshipping the true God in his impersonal aspect. The majority of the pious are idolaters.
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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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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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One should identify oneself with the universe itself. Everything that is less than the universe is subjected to suffering.
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The virtue of hope is an orientation of the soul towards a transformation after which it will be wholly and exclusively love.
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Human existence is so fragile a thing and exposed to such dangers that I cannot love without trembling.
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The whole evolution of present-day society tends to develop the various forms of bureaucratic oppression and to give them a sort of autonomy in regard to capitalism as such.
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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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Truth is one, but error is manifold.
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one is never got out of the cave, one comes out of it.
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The contemporary form of true greatness lies in a civilization founded upon the spirituality of work.
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Why is it that reality, when set down untransposed in a book, sounds false?
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