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I think that feminism permits women to speak among themselves, instead of simply being resentful, having personal complaints, which get them nowhere and which make them sick and ill-tempered, depressive and poison the lives of their husbands and children. It's much better to arrive at a collective consciousness of this problem, which is both a kind of therapy and the basis for a struggle.
Simone de Beauvoir -
Many things would be changed for Americans if they would only admit that there is ill-luck in this world and that misfortune is not a priori a crime.
Simone de Beauvoir
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Each of us is responsible for everything and to every human being.
Simone de Beauvoir -
There are so many problems. Women can go to work on these as well without giving up their feminism.
Simone de Beauvoir -
Each person has his or her own very particular history and after all, the unconscious is the most secret part of ourselves.
Simone de Beauvoir -
Virginia Woolf thought a lot about her own sex when she wrote. In the best sense of the word, her writing is very feminine, and by that I mean that women are supposed to be very sensitive to all the sensations of nature, much more so than men, much more contemplative. It's this quality that marks her best works.
Simone de Beauvoir -
It is old age, rather than death, that is to be contrasted with life. Old age is life's parody, whereas death transforms life into a destiny: in a way it preserves it by giving it the absolute dimension. Death does away with time.
Simone de Beauvoir -
I am not at all for a feminism which is entirely separatist, which would say, "this domain is purely for women." I don't believe that at all.
Simone de Beauvoir
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Indeed, there is nothing more arbitrary than intervening as a stranger in a destiny which is not ours.
Simone de Beauvoir -
Anyway I know only too well that all life is nothing but a brief reprieve from death.
Simone de Beauvoir -
When someone you love dies you pay for the sin of outliving her with a thousand piercing regrets.
Simone de Beauvoir -
Only a woman can write what it is to feel as a woman, to be a woman.
Simone de Beauvoir -
We can reorient science - for example, a kind of medicine much more directed toward the enormous number of women's health problems which are neglected now. But the original givens of this science are the same for men and for women. Women simply have to steal the instrument; they don't have to break it, or try, a priori, to make of it something totally different. Steal it and use it for their own good.
Simone de Beauvoir -
The way I approached a question, my habit of mind, the way I looked at things, what I took for granted - all this was myself and it did not seem to me that I could alter it.
Simone de Beauvoir
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In the face of an obstacle which is impossible to overcome, stubbornness is stupid.
Simone de Beauvoir -
Literature in France seems to be undergoing a crisis now, and nothing comes immediately to mind.
Simone de Beauvoir -
Words have to murder reality before they can hold it captive.
Simone de Beauvoir -
It is impossible to do anything for anyone.
Simone de Beauvoir -
I believe that we must use language. If it is used in a feminist perspective, with a feminist sensibility, language will find itself changed in a feminist manner. It will nonetheless be the language. You can't not use this universal instrument; you can't create an artificial language, in my opinion. But naturally, each writer must use it in his/her own way.
Simone de Beauvoir -
It is a difficult matter for man to realize the extreme importance of social discriminations which seem outwardly insignificant but which produce in woman moral and intellectual effects so profound that they appear to spring from her original nature.
Simone de Beauvoir
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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.
Simone de Beauvoir -
The American woman's inequality with men is proved by her defiant attitude.
Simone de Beauvoir -
No existence can be validly fulfilled if it is limited to itself.
Simone de Beauvoir -
Immortality is a terrible curse.
Simone de Beauvoir