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

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The great error of nearly all studies of war... has been to consider war as an episode in foreign policies, when it is an act of interior politics.
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I am not a Catholic but I consider the Christian idea, which has its roots in Greek thought and in the course of the centuries has nourished all of our European civilization, as something that one cannot renounce without becoming degraded.
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There is only one fault, only one: our inability to feed upon light.
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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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A man thinks he is dying for his country, said Anatole France, but he is dying for a few industrialists. But even that is saying too much. What one dies for is not even so substantial and tangible as an industrialist.
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The supernatural virtue of justice consists of behaving exactly as though there were equality when one is the stronger in an unequal relationship.
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Just as the power of the sun is the only force in the natural universe that causes a plant to grow against gravity, so the grace of God is the only force in the spiritual universe that causes a person to grow against the gravity of their own ego.
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A hurtful act is the transference to others of the degradation which we bear in ourselves.
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How many people have been thus led, through lack of self-confidence, to stifle their most justified doubts?
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Nothing can have as its destination anything other than its origin. The contrary idea, the idea of progress, is poison.
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I only read what I am hungry for at the moment when I have an appetite for it, and then I do not read, I eat.
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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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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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Humility is attentive patience.
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The notion of rights is linked with the notion of sharing out, of exchange, of measured quantity. It has a commercial flavor, essentially evocative of legal claims and arguments. Rights are always asserted in a tone of contention and when this tone is adopted, it must rely upon force in the background, or else it will be laughed at.
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It is much easier to imagine ourselves in the place of God the Creator than in the place of Christ crucified.
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Punishment is a vital need of the human soul.
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Evil is license, and that is why it is monotonous: everything has to be drawn from ourselves. One is condemned to false infinity. That is hell itself.
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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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One should identify oneself with the universe itself. Everything that is less than the universe is subjected to suffering.
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