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Every new development for the last three centuries has brought men closer to a state of affairs in which absolutely nothing would be recognized in the whole world as possessing a claim to obedience except the authority of the State. The majority of people in Europe obey nothing else.

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
People
Else
Authority
Claim
States
Europe
Obedience
Nothing
Development
Affair
Possessing
Whole
Century
Claims
Obey
Every
State
Brought
Recognized
Would
Lasts
Absolutely
Centuries
Men
Last
Majority
Affairs
World
Three
Except
Closer

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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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A hurtful act is the transference to others of the degradation which we bear in ourselves.
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It is human misery and not pleasure which contains the secret of the divine wisdom.
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We should do only those righteous actions which we cannot stop ourselves from doing.
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In struggling against anguish one never produces serenity the struggle against anguish only produces new forms of anguish.
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Even if our efforts of attention seem for years to be producing no result, one day a light that is in exact proportion to them will flood the soul.
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The payment of debts is necessary for social order. The non-payment is quite equally necessary for social order. For centuries humanity has oscillated, serenely unaware, between these two contradictory necessities.
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Every perfect life is a parable invented by God.
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In the Church, considered as a social organism, the mysteries inevitably degenerate into beliefs.
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Charity. To love human beings in so far as they are nothing. That is to love them as God does.
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To want friendship is a great fault. Friendship ought to be a gratuitous joy, like the joys afforded by art or life.
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The world needs saints who have genius, just as a plague-stricken town needs doctors.
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The Our Father contains all possible petitions we cannot conceive of any prayer not already contained in it. It is to prayer what Christ is to humanity.
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Gregorian chant, Romanesque architecture, the Iliad , the invention of geometry were not, for the people through whom they were brought into being and made available to us, occasions for the manifestation of personality.
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