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Adversity
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Misfortunes leave wounds which bleed drop by drop even in sleep; thus little by little they train man by force and dispose him to wisdom in spite of himself. Man must learn to think of himself as a limited and dependent being; and only suffering teaches
-Simone Weil
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Art
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Art is the symbol of the two noblest human efforts: to construct and to refrain from destruction.
-Simone Weil
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Atheism
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An atheist may be simply one whose faith and love are concentrated on the impersonal aspects of God.
-Simone Weil
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Attachment
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Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be attained only by someone who is detached.
-Simone Weil
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Authors & Writing
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There is something else which has the power to awaken us to the truth. It is the works of writers of genius. They give us, in the guise of fiction, something equivalent to the actual density of the real, that density which life offers us every day but which we are unable to grasp because we are amusing ourselves with lies.
-Simone Weil
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Beauty
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Beauty always promises, but never gives anything.
-Simone Weil
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Charity
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Charity. To love human beings in so far as they are nothing. That is to love them as God does.
-Simone Weil
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Christianity
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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.
-Simone Weil
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Every time that I think of the crucifixion of Christ, I commit the sin of envy.
-Simone Weil
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Civilization
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If Germany, thanks to Hitler and his successors, were to enslave the European nations and destroy most of the treasures of their past, future historians would certainly pronounce that she had civilized Europe.
-Simone Weil
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Communication
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Two prisoners whose cells adjoin communicate with each other by knocking on the wall. The wall is the thing which separates them but is also their means of communication. It is the same with us and God. Every separation is a link.
-Simone Weil
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Communism
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The only hope of socialism resides in those who have already brought about in themselves, as far as is possible in the society of today, that union between manual and intellectual labor which characterizes the society we are aiming at.
-Simone Weil
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Culture
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Culture is an instrument wielded by teachers to manufacture teachers, who, in their turn, will manufacture still more teachers.
-Simone Weil
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Debt / Borrow / Loan
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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.
-Simone Weil
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Doubt
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The poison of skepticism becomes, like alcoholism, tuberculosis, and some other diseases, much more virulent in a hitherto virgin soil.
-Simone Weil
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Education
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The most important part of teaching is to teach what it is to know.
-Simone Weil
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Enlightenment, The
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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
-Simone Weil
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Equality
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Equality is the public recognition, effectively expressed in institutions and manners, of the principle that an equal degree of attention is due to the needs of all human beings.
-Simone Weil
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Evil
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Evil is neither suffering nor sin; it is both at the same time, it is something common to them both. For they are linked together; sin makes us suffer and suffering makes us evil, and this indissoluble complex of suffering and sin is the evil in which we are submerged against our will, and to our horror.
-Simone Weil
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Faith
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The mysteries of faith are degraded if they are made into an object of affirmation and negation, when in reality they should be an object of contemplation.
-Simone Weil
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Fate & Destiny
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Nothing can have as its destination anything other than its origin. The contrary idea, the idea of progress, is poison.
-Simone Weil
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Friends
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Learn to reject friendship, or rather the dream of friendship. To want friendship is a great fault. Friendship ought to be a gratuitous joy, like the joys afforded by art, or life (like aesthetic joys). I must refuse it in order to be worthy to receive it
-Simone Weil
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For when two beings who are not friends are near each other there is no meeting, and when friends are far apart there is no separation.
-Simone Weil
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Future, The
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The future is made of the same stuff as the present.
-Simone Weil
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Genius
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Real genius is nothing else but the supernatural virtue of humility in the domain of thought.
-Simone Weil
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Books by and about Simone Weil