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The recognition of human wretchedness is difficult for whoever is rich and powerful because he is almost invincibly led to believe that he is something. It is equally difficult for the man in miserable circumstances because he is almost invincibly led to believe that the rich and powerful man is something.

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
Men
Almost
Rich
Powerful
Wretchedness
Difficult
Whoever
Human
Equally
Humans
Recognition
Something
Miserable
Believe
Circumstances

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Why is it that reality, when set down untransposed in a book, sounds false?
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He who has not God in himself cannot feel His absence.
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Humility is attentive patience.
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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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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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To us, men of the West, a very strange thing happened at the turn of the century without noticing it, we lost science, or at least the thing that had been called by that name for the last four centuries. What we now have in place of it is something different, radically different, and we don't know what it is. Nobody knows what it is.
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The villagers seldom leave the village many scientists have limited and poorly cultivated minds apart from their specialty.
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The destruction of the past is perhaps the greatest of all crimes.
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Love of God is pure when joy and suffering inspire an equal degree of gratitude.
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When literature becomes deliberately indifferent to the opposition of good and evil it betrays its function and forfeits all claim to excellence.
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Rome is the Great Beast of atheism and materialism, adoring nothing but itself. Israel is the Great Beast of religion. Neither one nor the other is likable. The Great Beast is always repulsive
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Pain and suffering are a kind of currency passed from hand to hand until they reach someone who receives them but does not pass them on.
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Armies under the control of ... a sovereign State cannot bring freedom to anyone.
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A man whose mind feels that it is captive would prefer to blind himself to the fact. But if he hates falsehood, he will not do so and in that case he will have to suffer a lot. He will beat his head against the wall until he faints. He will come to again
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To want friendship is a great fault. Friendship ought to be a gratuitous joy, like the joys afforded by art or life.
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If we go down into ourselves, we find that we possess exactly what we desire.
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