Simone Weil 1909 – 1943
Simone Weil was a French philosopher, mystic, and political activist. Trained in philosophy alongside Simone de Beauvoir, she taught at provincial lycees while spending vacations in factories, in the fields, and on the front lines of the Spanish Civil War in order to share the conditions of those she wrote about. Her later writing turned to a Christian mysticism without baptism, articulating themes of attention, affliction, and decreation. She died at thirty-four during the Second World War, having refused food beyond the rations of her compatriots in occupied France.
Key facts
- Nationality
- French
- Era
- Contemporary
- Movements
- Continental, Christian
Selected quotes
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Attributed to Simone Weil:
“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”
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Attributed to Simone Weil:
“All sins are attempts to fill voids.”
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Attributed to Simone Weil:
“The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like the condemned man who is proud of his large cell.”
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Attributed to Simone Weil:
“Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life.”
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Attributed to Simone Weil:
“Liberty, taking the word in its concrete sense, consists in the ability to choose.”