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The proper method of philosophy consists in clearly conceiving the insoluble problems in all their insolubility and then in simply contemplating them, fixedly and tirelessly, year after year, without any hope, patiently waiting.

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
Year
Proper
Hope
Philosopher
Tirelessly
Science
Clearly
Insoluble
Problem
Method
Conceiving
Without
Problems
Patiently
Years
Simply
Contemplating
Philosophy
Contemplation
Waiting
Consists

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The notion of obligations comes before that of rights, which is subordinate and relative to the former. A right is not effectual by itself, but only in relation to the obligation to which it corresponds.
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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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Love: To feel with one's whole self the existence of another being.
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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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Bourgeois society is infected by monomania: the monomania of accounting. For it, the only thing that has value is what can be counted in francs and centimes. It never hesitates to sacrifice human life to figures which look well on paper, such as national budgets or industrial balance sheets.
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Compassion directed toward oneself is true humility.
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Necessity is God's veil.
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To get power over is to defile. To possess is to defile.
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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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If you want to know what a man is really like, take notice of how he acts when he loses money.
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Humanism was not wrong in thinking that truth, beauty, liberty, and equality are of infinite value, but in thinking that man can get them for himself without grace.
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The role of the intelligence - that part of us which affirms and denies and formulates opinions is merely to submit.
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The beautiful is the experimental proof that the incarnation is possible.
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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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The speed with which bureaucracy has invaded almost every branch of human activity is something astounding once one thinks about it.
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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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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.
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It is impossible that the whole of truth should not be present at every time and every place, available for anyone who desires it.
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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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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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