Quote

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.

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
Intellectual
Adherence
Subjects
Voluntary
Alone
Whatsoever
Attention
Obligation
Form
Degree
Anything
Forms
Thing
Degrees
Never
Subject
Owed

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We have to try to cure our faults by attention and not by will.
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Compassion directed toward oneself is true humility.
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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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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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Love of God is pure when joy and suffering inspire an equal degree of gratitude.
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There is no detachment where there is no pain. And there is no pain endured without hatred or lying unless detachment is present too.
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A self-respecting nation is ready for anything, including war, except for a renunciation of its option to make war.
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Every being cries out in silence to be read differently. Do not be indifferent to these cries.
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The same suffering is much harder to bear for a high motive than for a base one. The people [during World War II] who stood motionless, from one to eight in the morning, for the sake of having an egg, would have found it very difficult to do in order to save a human life.
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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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How many people have been thus led, through lack of self-confidence, to stifle their most justified doubts?
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Meditation on the chance which led to the meeting of my mother and father is even more salutary than meditation on death.
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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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It is much easier to imagine ourselves in the place of God the Creator than in the place of Christ crucified.
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If we go down into ourselves, we find that we possess exactly what we desire.
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An imaginary perfection is automatically at the same level as I who imagine it neither higher nor lower.
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Punishment is a vital need of the human soul.
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We possess nothing in the world - a mere chance can strip us of everything - except the power to say 'I.
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I am not a Catholic but I consider the Christian idea, which has its roots in Greek thought and in the course of the centuries has nourished all of our European civilization, as something that one cannot renounce without becoming degraded.
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Art is the symbol of the two noblest human efforts: to construct and to refrain from destruction.
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