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Why is it that reality, when set down untransposed in a book, sounds false?

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
Reality
Book
False
Sounds
Sound

More quotes by Simone Weil

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The afflicted are not listened to. They are like someone whose tongue has been cut out and who occasionally forgets the fact. When they move their lips no ear perceives any sound. And they themselves soon sink into impotence in the use of language, because of the certainty of not being heard.
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Only he who has measured the dominion of force, and knows how not to respect it, is capable of love andjustice.
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Punishment is a vital need of the human soul.
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The human soul has need of security and also of risk. The fear of violence or of hunger or of any other extreme evil is a sickness of the soul. The boredom produced by a complete absence of risk is also a sickness of the soul.
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Electra weeping for the dead Orestes. If we love God while thinking that he does not exist, he will manifest his existence.
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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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One does not play Bach without having done scales. But neither does one play a scale merely for the sake of the scale.
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The difference between more or less intelligent men is like the difference between criminals condemned to life imprisonment in smaller or larger cells. The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like a condemned man who is proud of his large cell.
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Moreover, nothing is so rare as to see misfortune fairly portrayed the tendency is either to treat the unfortunate person as though catastrophe were his natural vocation, or to ignore the effects of misfortune on the soul, to assume, that is, that the soul can suffer and remain unmarked by it, can fail, in fact, to be recast in misfortune's image.
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Capitalism has brought about the emancipation of collective humanity with respect to nature. But this collective humanity has itself taken on with respect to the individual the oppressive function formerly exercised by nature.
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Truth is sought not because it is truth but because it is good.
Simone Weil
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In the Church, considered as a social organism, the mysteries inevitably degenerate into beliefs.
Simone Weil
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One should identify oneself with the universe itself. Everything that is less than the universe is subjected to suffering.
Simone Weil
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Love consents to all and commands only those who consent. Love is abdication. God is abdication.
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We can only know one thing about God - that he is what we are not. Our wretchedness alone is an image of this. The more we contemplate it, the more we contemplate him.
Simone Weil
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Time's violence rends the soul, by the rent eternity enters.
Simone Weil
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Evil being the root of mystery, pain is the root of knowledge.
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In the intellectual order, the virtue of humility is nothing more nor less than the power of attention.
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Humility is attentive patience.
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Necessity is God's veil.
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