"Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity."
"The man who has known pure joy, if only for a moment ... is the only man for whom affliction is something devastating. At the same time he is the only man who has not deserved the punishment. But, after all, for him it is no punishment; it is God holding his hand and pressing rather hard. For, if he remains constant, what he will discover buried deep under the sound of his own lamentations is the pearl of the silence of God."
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Source: Simone Weil (1977). “The Simone Weil Reader”
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"We must not wish for the disappearance of our troubles but for the grace to transform them."
"Pain and suffering are a kind of currency passed from hand to hand until they reach someone who receives them but does not pass them on."
"There are only two things that pierce the human heart. One is beauty. The other is affliction."
"Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it is the person crushed who feels what is happening. Unless one has placed oneself on the side of the oppressed, to feel with them, one cannot understand."
"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."