Simone De Beauvoir Quotes
Simone De Beauvoir Quotes
One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, and compassion
1505I am awfully greedy; I want everything from life. I want to be a woman and to be a man, to have many friends and to have loneliness, to work much and write good books, to travel and enjoy myself, to be selfish and to be unselfish… You see, it is difficult to get all which I want. And then when I do not succeed I get mad with anger.
1650 Capabilities are clearly manifested only when they have been realized.
4624 A day in which I don't write leaves a taste of ashes.
2467 He reflected. 'I know a lot of different kids of people; what I want is to show each of them how the others really are. You hear so many lies!
2465 Being on the fringes of the world is not the best place for someone who intends to re-create it: here again, to go beyond the given, one must be deeply rooted in it. Personal accomplishments are almost impossible in human categories collectively kept in an inferior situation.
3555 In itself, homosexuality is as limiting as heterosexuality: the ideal should be to be capable of loving a woman or a man; either, a human being, without feeling fear, restraint, or obligation.
1410 Two separate beings, in different circumstances, face to face in freedom and seeking justification of their existence through one another, will always live an adventure full of risk and promise." (p. 248)
2028 I am incapable of conceiving infinity, and yet I do not accept finity. I want this adventure that is the context of my life to go on without end.
4410 It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our lives that we must draw our strength to live and our reasons for living.
4772 Be loved, be admired, be necessary; be somebody.
4427 What an odd thing a diary is: the things you omit are more important than those you put in.
3450 One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.
1790 Today, however, we are having a hard time living because we are so bent on outwitting death.
2418 The misfortune is that although everyone must come to [death], each experiences the adventure in solitude. We never left Maman during those last days... and yet we were profoundly separated from her.
1944 On ne naît pas femme: on le devient.
4069 When I was a child, when I was an adolescent, books saved me from despair: that convinced me that culture was the highest of values[...].
2797 To lose confidence in one’s body is to lose confidence in oneself.
3655 In those days we saw every sort of object as though it were one of those tiny handkerchiefs from which a conjuror can produce silk scarfs, streamers, flags, and yards of ribbon. A cup of coffee became a kaleidoscope in which we could spend ages watching the mutable reflections of ceiling or chandelier.
2908 L'ideologie chrétienne n'a pas peu contribué à l'oppression de la femme.
2817 Every war, every revolution, demands the sacrifice of a generation, of a collectivity, by those who undertake it.
3442 Elles [Rosa Luxembourg, Marie Curie] démontrent avec éclat que ce n'est pas l'infériorité des femmes qui a déterminé leur insignifiance historique: c'est leur insignifiance historique qui les a vouées à l'infériorité.
3527 To catch a husband is an art; to hold him is a job.
4960 Un des problèmes essentiels qui se posent à propos de la femme, c'est la conciliation de son rôle reproducteur et de son travail producteur.
4856 Therefore the misfortune which comes to man as a result of the fact that he was a child is that his freedom was first concealed from him and that all his life he will be nostalgic for the time when he did not know it's exigencies.
1340 Change your life today. Don't gamble on the future, act now, without delay.
4821 My contemplation is an excruciation only because it is also a joy.
2527 Weakness' is weakness only in light of the aims man sets for himself, the instruments at his disposal and the laws he imposes.
2108 Tous les enfants essaient de compenser la séparation du sevrage par des conduites de séduction et de parade; on oblige le garçon à dépasser ce stade, on le délivre de son narcissisme en le fixant sur son pénis; tandis que la fillette est confirmée dans cette tendance à se faire objet qui est commune à tous les enfants.
3825 In the old days the worst part of my depression used to be the astonishment it caused me, the scandalized way in which I fought against it. Nowadays, on the other hand, I accept it cheerfully enough, like an old familiar friend.
3618 Simone De Beauvoir At Amazon
