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The essential characteristic of the first half of the twentieth century is the growing weakness, and almost the disappearance, of the idea of value.
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
Growing
Twentieth
Almost
Characteristic
Values
Characteristics
Half
Essential
Idea
Essentials
Ideas
Weakness
Firsts
Value
First
Century
Disappearance
More quotes by Simone Weil
As soon as men know that they can kill without fear of punishment or blame, they kill or at least they encourage killers with approving smiles.
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What a country calls its vital... interests are not things that help its people live, but things that help it make war.
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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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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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The entire universe is nothing but a great metaphor.
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Death. An instantaneous state, without past or future. Indispensable for entering eternity.
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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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Nothing is worse than extreme affliction which destroys the I from the outside, because after that we can no longer destroy it ourselves.
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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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Meditation on the chance which led to the meeting of my mother and father is even more salutary than meditation on death.
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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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One should identify oneself with the universe itself. Everything that is less than the universe is subjected to suffering.
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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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Academic work is one of those fields which contain a pearl so precious that it is worth while to sell all our possessions, keeping nothing for ourselves, in order to be able to acquire it.
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To be a hero or a heroine, one must give an order to oneself.
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Every new development for the last three centuries has brought men closer to a state of affairs in which absolutely nothing would be recognized in the whole world as possessing a claim to obedience except the authority of the State. The majority of people in Europe obey nothing else.
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The joy of learning is as indispensable in study as breathing is in running.
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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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prayer consists of attention. It is the orientation of all the attention of which the soul is capable towards God. The quality of the attention counts for much in the quality of the prayer. Warmth of heart cannot make up for it.
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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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