Quote

The same suffering is much harder to bear for a high motive than for a base one. The people [during World War II] who stood motionless, from one to eight in the morning, for the sake of having an egg, would have found it very difficult to do in order to save a human life.

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
Humans
Morning
Base
Much
High
Motive
Would
Suffering
Bear
Life
War
Eight
World
Difficult
Save
People
Found
Sake
Motionless
Order
Bears
Eggs
Human
Harder
Stood

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Algebra and money are essentially levelers the first intellectually, the second effectively.
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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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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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Religion in so far as it is a source of consolation is a hindrance to true faith and in this sense atheism is a purification. I have to be an atheist with that part of myself which is not made for God. Among those in whom the supernatural part of themselves has not been awakened, the atheists are right and the believers wrong.
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Compassion directed to oneself is humility.
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Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.
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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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Sin is nothing else but the failure to recognize human wretchedness.
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