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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.
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
Century
Necessities
Humanity
Unaware
Quite
Payment
Social
Contradictory
Order
Centuries
Two
Equally
Debt
Serenely
Necessary
Debts
More quotes by Simone Weil
Beauty is a fruit which we look at without trying to seize it.
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There are only two sorts of greatness: true greatness, which is of a spiritual order, and the old, old lie of world conquest. Conquest is an ersatz greatness.
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Punishment is a vital need of the human soul.
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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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Uprooting is by far the most dangerous of the ills of human society, for it perpetuates itself.
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There is no detachment where there is no pain. And there is no pain endured without hatred or lying unless detachment is present too.
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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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Sin is not a distance, it is a turning of our gaze in the wrong direction.
Simone Weil
There is no greater joy for me than looking at the sky on a clear night with an attention so concentrated that all my other thoughts disappear then one can think that the stars enter into one's soul.
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A society like the Church, which claims to be Divine is perhaps more dangerous on account of the ersatz good which it contains then on account of the evil which sullies it. Something of the social labelled divine: an intoxicating mixture which carries with it every sort of license. Devil disguised.
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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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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.
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Purity is the ability to contemplate defilement.
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A man whose mind feels that it is captive would prefer to blind himself to the fact. But if he hates falsehood, he will not do so and in that case he will have to suffer a lot. He will beat his head against the wall until he faints. He will come to again
Simone Weil
The essential thing to know about God is that God is Good. All the rest is secondary.
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It is human misery and not pleasure which contains the secret of the divine wisdom.
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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.
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For when two beings who are not friends are near each other there is no meeting, and when friends are far apart there is no separation.
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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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There is a certain kind of morality which is even more alien to good and evil than amorality is.
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