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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
Humanity
Unaware
Quite
Payment
Social
Contradictory
Order
Centuries
Two
Equally
Debt
Serenely
Necessary
Debts
Century
Necessities
More quotes by Simone Weil
There are only two things that pierce the human heart. One is beauty. The other is affliction.
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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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I suffer more from the humiliations inflicted by my country than from those inflicted on her.
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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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Armies under the control of ... a sovereign State cannot bring freedom to anyone.
Simone Weil
The joy of learning is as indispensable in study as breathing is in running.
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Justice consists in seeing that no harm is done to men. Whenever a man cries inwardly: 'Why am I being hurt?' harm is being done to him. He is often mistaken when he tries to define the harm, and why and by whom it is being inflicted on him. But the cry itself is infallible.
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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.
Simone Weil
Never react to an evil in such a way as to augment it.
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Do not allow yourself to be imprisoned by any affection. Keep your solitude. The day, if it ever comes, when you are given true affection, there will be no opposition between interior solitude and friendship, quite the reverse. It is even by this infallible sigh that you will recognize it.
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If we are suffering illness, poverty, or misfortune, we think we shall be satisfied on the day it ceases. But there too, we know it is false so soon as one has got used to not suffering one wants something else.
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The beautiful is the experimental proof that the incarnation is possible.
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Every perfect life is a parable invented by God.
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A doctrine serves no purpose in itself, but it is indispensable to have one if only to avoid being deceived by false doctrines.
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The simultaneous existence of opposite virtues in the soul like pincers to catch hold of God.
Simone Weil
We do injury to a child if we bring it up in a narrow Christianity, which prevents it from ever becoming capable of perceiving that there are treasures of purest gold to be found in non-Christian civilizations. Laical education does an even greater injury to children. It covers up those treasures, and those of Christianity as well.
Simone Weil
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.
Simone Weil
We cannot take a single step toward heaven. It is not in our power to travel in a vertical direction. If however we look heavenward for a long time, God comes and takes us up.
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If you say to someone who has ears to hear: What you are doing to me is not just, you may touch and awaken at its source the spirit of attention and love. But it is not the same with words like, I have the right... or you have no right to... They evoke a latent war and awaken the spirit of contention.
Simone Weil
Contemplating an object fixedly with the mind, asking myself, 'What is it?' without thinking of any other object or relating it to anything else for hours on end.
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