Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.
Simone Weil Letter to Joë Bousquet, letter to Joë Bousquet, 13 April 1942 (1942)
Source checked by an editor
When and why it was written
- When
- April 1942, written in Marseille shortly before Weil left occupied France.
- Why
- Bousquet had been paralysed by a wound in the First World War. Weil wrote to him about attention as the whole of what she could offer.
What it means
Weil means attention in a demanding sense: an emptying-out that lets another person register without being converted into a problem to solve.
Calling it generosity, and the rarest kind, is a claim about cost. Money and time can be given while withheld. Attention cannot be faked, which is why it is scarce.
Read the source
Letter to Joë Bousquet, 1942
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Your turn
When did you give your full attention today?
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