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
The need for roots is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.
Affliction compels us to recognize as real what we did not believe possible.
All the natural movements of the soul are governed by laws analogous to those of physical gravity. Grace alone is the exception.
Prayer is nothing other than attention in its fullness.
Related Quotes
Every other is wholly other.
-- Jacques Derrida
Prayer is nothing other than attention in its fullness.
-- Simone Weil
The purpose of human existence is to attain supreme happiness.
-- Farabi
If you see fraud and do not say fraud, you are a fraud.
-- Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Nothing in the world is worth turning away from what we love.
-- Albert Camus
Blessedness is not the reward of virtue but virtue itself.
-- Benedictus de Spinoza