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We possess nothing in the world - a mere chance can strip us of everything - except the power to say 'I.

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
Nothing
World
Strip
Possess
Mere
Except
Chance
Power
Everything

More quotes by Simone Weil

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Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions reality can be attained only by someone who is detached.
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In struggling against anguish one never produces serenity the struggle against anguish only produces new forms of anguish.
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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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Justice consists in seeing that no harm is done to men. Whenever a man cries inwardly: 'Why am I being hurt?' harm is being done to him. He is often mistaken when he tries to define the harm, and why and by whom it is being inflicted on him. But the cry itself is infallible.
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Only an indirect method is effective. We do nothing if we have not first drawn back.
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If you say to someone who has ears to hear: What you are doing to me is not just, you may touch and awaken at its source the spirit of attention and love. But it is not the same with words like, I have the right... or you have no right to... They evoke a latent war and awaken the spirit of contention.
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Beauty is a fruit which we look at without trying to seize it.
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In this world, only those people who have fallen to the lowest degree of humiliation, far below beggary, who are not just without any social consideration but are regarded by all as being deprived of that foremost human dignity, reason itself - only those people, in fact, are capable of telling the truth. All the others lie.
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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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The development of the faculty of attention forms the real object and almost the sole interest of studies.
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When a man's life is destroyed or damaged by some wound or privation of soul or body, which is due to other men's actions or negligence, it is not only his sensibility that suffers but also his aspiration toward the good. Therefore there has been sacrilege towards that which is sacred in him.
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Man alone can enslave man.
Simone Weil
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There is a certain kind of morality which is even more alien to good and evil than amorality is.
Simone Weil
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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 notion of rights is linked with the notion of sharing out, of exchange, of measured quantity. It has a commercial flavor, essentially evocative of legal claims and arguments. Rights are always asserted in a tone of contention and when this tone is adopted, it must rely upon force in the background, or else it will be laughed at.
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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.
Simone Weil
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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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It is precisely those artists and writers who are most inclined to think of their art as the manifestation of their personality who are in fact the most in bondage to public taste.
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The essential thing to know about God is that God is Good. All the rest is secondary.
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Modern life is given over to immoderation. Immoderation invades everything: actions and thought, public and private life.
Simone Weil