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We only possess what we renounce what we do not renounce escapes from us.

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
Escapes
Renounce
Possess

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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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Algebra and money are essentially levelers the first intellectually, the second effectively.
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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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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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We can only know one thing about God - that he is what we are not. Our wretchedness alone is an image of this. The more we contemplate it, the more we contemplate him.
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Necessity is God's veil.
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The entire universe is nothing but a great metaphor.
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Every atheist is an idolater- unless he is worshipping the true God in his impersonal aspect. The majority of the pious are idolaters.
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Time's violence rends the soul, by the rent eternity enters.
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Attachment is a manufacturer of illusion and whoever wants reality ought to be detached.
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The whole evolution of present-day society tends to develop the various forms of bureaucratic oppression and to give them a sort of autonomy in regard to capitalism as such.
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Our science is like a store filled with the most subtle intellectual devices for solving the most complex problems, and yet we are almost incapable of applying the elementary principles of rational thought.
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The Our Father contains all possible petitions we cannot conceive of any prayer not already contained in it. It is to prayer what Christ is to humanity.
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The speed with which bureaucracy has invaded almost every branch of human activity is something astounding once one thinks about it.
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Even if our efforts of attention seem for years to be producing no result, one day a light that is in exact proportion to them will flood the soul.
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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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It is impossible that the whole of truth should not be present at every time and every place, available for anyone who desires it.
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Human existence is so fragile a thing and exposed to such dangers that I cannot love without trembling.
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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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One does not play Bach without having done scales. But neither does one play a scale merely for the sake of the scale.
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