Simone Weil (born in 1909 in Paris) was a French mystic, philosopher, and activist. After being fired from several jobs as a schoolteacher for her social activism, she took a job in an auto factory so she could study and write about the effects of heavy industrial labor. When the Germans invaded France at the start of World War I, she fled with her family to the United States, but refused to eat more than the rations allotted to the French people back in Europe. She lived a fiercely principled life, but exhausted by her political demonstrations, she died of tuberculosis at the age of 34. Her 20-volume collection of essays, in which this encouraging quote appears, was published posthumously.