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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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Interpretation

What this quote means

Separation can create communication and connection, much like barriers can be used to reach out.

Simone Weil's quote illustrates the paradoxical relationship between separation and connection. Through the metaphor of prisoners communicating via a wall, she suggests that obstacles can also become channels for interaction, emphasizing that our perceived barriers, including our relationship with God, can serve as opportunities for deeper understanding and connection.

Themes

SeparationCommunicationConnectionBarriersGod

In practice

Example use cases

In a speech about overcoming difficulties, one might say: 'As Simone Weil noted, every separation is a link, emphasizing the potential for connection even through challenges.'

More from Simone Weil

The afflicted are not listened to. They are like someone whose tongue has been cut out and who occasionally forgets the fact. When they move their lips no ear perceives any sound. And they themselves soon sink into impotence in the use of language, because of the certainty of not being heard.
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The appetite for power, even for universal power, is only insane when there is no possibility of indulging it; a man who sees the possibility opening before him and does not try to grasp it, even at the risk of destroying himself and his country, is either
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As soon as men know that they can kill without fear of punishment or blame, they kill; or at least they encourage killers with approving smiles.
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Evil is license, and that is why it is monotonous: everything has to be drawn from ourselves. One is condemned to false infinity. That is hell itself.
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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.
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How many people have been thus led, through lack of self-confidence, to stifle their most justified doubts?
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