Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.
L'attention est la forme la plus rare et la plus pure de la generosité.
Philosophers
Simone Weil
Born in Paris in 1909, Simone Weil died at 34, leaving behind a body of thought that defies conventional classification. A graduate of the Ecole Normale Superieure, she voluntarily became a factory worker, forging from the crucible of physical suffering a philosophy centered on 'affliction' (malheur) and 'attention' (attention). Her posthumous collection Gravity and Grace, edited by Camus, has been read across the boundaries of religion, philosophy, and social thought ever since.
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Simone Weil's Other Quotes
All the natural movements of the soul are governed by laws analogous to those of physical gravity. Grace alone is the exception.
Affliction compels us to recognize as real what we did not believe possible.
Prayer is nothing other than attention in its fullness.
The need for roots is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.
Related Quotes
It is not living that matters, but living rightly.
-- Socrates
No one desires evil.
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Ethics is the ground of being of human community — the way of aidagara (betweenness) between person and person.
-- Tetsuro Watsuji
Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire.
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A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury.
-- John Stuart Mill
Blessedness is not the reward of virtue but virtue itself.
-- Benedictus de Spinoza