Quote

School children and students who love God should never say: For my part I like mathematics I like French I like Greek. They should learn to like all these subjects, because all of them develop that faculty of attention which, directed toward God, is the very substance of prayer.

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
Learn
Substance
School
Develop
Part
Mathematics
Children
Toward
Never
Subjects
Directed
Love
Students
Faculty
Like
Prayer
Greek
Attention
French

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All those who possess in its pure state the love of their neighbour and the acceptance of the order of the world, inclucing affliction-all those, even should they live and die to all appearances atheists, are surely saved.
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The destruction of the past is perhaps the greatest of all crimes.
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What is surprising is not that oppression should make its appearance only after higher forms of economy have been reached, but that it should always accompany them.
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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.
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Intellectual adherence is never owed to anything whatsoever, for it is never in any degree a voluntary thing. Attention alone is voluntary. It alone forms the subject of an obligation.
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We should do only those righteous actions which we cannot stop ourselves from doing.
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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.
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the instruments of power - arms, gold, machines, magical or technical secrets - always exist independently of him who disposes of them, and can be taken up by others. Consequently all power is unstable.
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We must not wish for the disappearance of our troubles but for the grace to transform them.
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Friendship is a miracle by which a person consents to view from a certain distance, without coming any nearer, the very being who is as necessary to him as food.
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The only great spirit of our time.
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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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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.
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Men owe us what we imagine they will give us. We must forgive them this debt.
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The right to kill: supposing the life of X ... were linked with our own so that the two deaths had to be simultaneous, should we still wish him to die? If with our whole body and soul we desire life and if nevertheless without lying, we can reply 'yes'> then we have the right to kill.
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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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Attachment is a manufacturer of illusion and whoever wants reality ought to be detached.
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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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Religion is a form of nourishment. It is difficult to appreciate the flavor and food-value of something one has never eaten.
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A science which does not bring us nearer to God is worthless.
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