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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.

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
Always
Oppression
Appearance
Economics
Forms
Higher
Economy
Accompany
Form
Surprising
Make
Reached

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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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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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Everything beautiful has a mark of eternity.
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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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In this world we live in a mixture of time and eternity. Hell would be pure time.
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To get power over is to defile. To possess is to defile.
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We are like horses who hurt themselves as soon as they pull on their bits - and we bow our heads. We even lose consciousness of the situation, we just submit. Any re-awakening of thought is then painful.
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It is not religion but revolution which is the opium of the people.
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Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.
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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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Bourgeois society is infected by monomania: the monomania of accounting. For it, the only thing that has value is what can be counted in francs and centimes. It never hesitates to sacrifice human life to figures which look well on paper, such as national budgets or industrial balance sheets.
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When an apprentice gets hurt, or complains of being tired, the workmen and peasants have this fine expression: It is the trade entering his body. Each time that we have some pain to go through, we can say to ourselves quite truly that it is the universe, the order and beauty of the world, and the obedience of God that are entering our body.
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Do not allow yourself to be imprisoned by any affection. Keep your solitude. The day, if it ever comes, when you are given true affection, there will be no opposition between interior solitude and friendship, quite the reverse. It is even by this infallible sigh that you will recognize it.
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There are only two things that pierce the human heart. One is beauty. The other is affliction.
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Love: To feel with one's whole self the existence of another being.
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Attachment is a manufacturer of illusion and whoever wants reality ought to be detached.
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The Hebrews took for their idol, not something made of metal or wood, but a race, a nation, something just as earthly. Their religion is essentially inseparable from such idolatry, because of the notion of the 'chosen people'.
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