Simone de Beauvoir Quotes
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What is an adult? A child blown up by age.
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No existence can be validly fulfilled if it is limited to itself.
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In a way, literature is true than life,' he said to himself. 'On paper, you say exactly and completely what you feel. How easy it is to break things off on paper! You hate, you shout, you kill, you commit suicide; you carry things to the very end. And that's why it's false. But it's damned satisfying. In life, you're constantly denying yourself, and others are always contradicting you. On paper, I make time stand still and I impose my convictions on the whole world; they become the only reality.
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He formed his sentences hesitantly and then threw them at me with such force that I felt as if I were receiving a present each time.
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The body is not a thing, it is a situation: it is our grasp on the world and our sketch of our project.
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She was ready to deny the existence of space and time rather than admit that love might not be eternal.
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My life was hurrying, racing tragically toward its end. And yet at the same time it was dripping so slowly, so very slowly now, hour by hour, minute by minute. One always has to wait until the sugar melts, the memory dies, the wound scars over, the sun sets, the unhappiness lifts and fades away.
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There are topics which are common to men and women. I think that if a woman speaks of oppression, of misery, she will speak of it in exactly the same way as a man. But if she speaks of her own personal problems as a woman, she will obviously speak in another way.
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To will oneself moral and to will oneself free are one and the same decision.
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Old age is life's parody.
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Buying is a profound pleasure.
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If you live long enough, you'll see that every victory turns into a defeat.
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For years I thought my work still lay ahead, and now I find it is behind me: there was no moment when it took place.
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If women really did have complete equality with men, society would be completely overturned.
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Work would be terribly boring if one did not play the game all out, passionately.
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Existence must be asserted in the present if one does not want all life to be defined as an escape toward nothingness.
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I think it's wrong to write in a totally esoteric language when you want to talk about things which interest a multitude of women.
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In truth we need to change the society itself, men as well as women, to change everything.
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Change your life today. Don't gamble on the future, act now, without delay.
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Between women love is contemplative; caresses are intended less to gain possession of the other than gradually to re-create the self through her; separateness is abolished, there is no struggle, no victory, no defeat; in exact reciprocity each is at once subject and object, sovereign and slave; duality become mutuality.
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Christian ideology has contributed no little to the oppression of woman.
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It is for man to establish the reign of liberty in the midst of the world of the given. To gain the supreme victory, it is necessary, for one thing, that by and through their natural differentiation men and women unequivocally affirm their brotherhood.
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In every society the artist or writer remains an outsider.
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A foreign country can best be understood through its literature.