Simone de Beauvoir Quotes
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The nearer I come to the end of my days, the more I am enabled to see that strange thing, a life, and to see it whole.
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One is not conceived a lady, one turns into one.
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There was a time, in the nineteenth century, for example, when women spoke mostly about the house, children, birth, and so forth, because it was their domain. That's changing a little, now.
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There is not a single line in this diary that does not call for a correction or a denial...Yes: throughout these pages I meant what I was writing and I meant the opposite; reading them again I feel completely lost...I was lying to myself. How I lied to myself!
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I am incapable of conceiving infinity, and yet I do not accept finity.
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Anger or revolt that does not get into the muscles remains a figment of the imagination.
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When we abolish the slavery of half of humanity, together with the whole system of hypocrisy it implies, then the "division" of humanity will reveal its genuine significance and the human couple will find its true form.
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I was made for another planet altogether. I mistook the way.
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When Goya was 80 he drew an ancient man propped on two sticks, with a great mass of white hair and beard all over his face, and the inscription, "I am still learning."
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Cooking is revolution and creation.
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To protest in the name of morality against 'excesses' or 'abuses' is an error which hints on active complicity. There are no 'abuses' or 'excesses' here, simpily an all-pervasive system.
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You can't define the future. And in my opinion, you can't define the avant-garde.
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The younger and healthier a woman is and the more her new and glossy body seems destined for eternal freshness, the less useful is artifice; but the carnal weakness of this prey that man takes and its ominous deterioration always have to be hidden from him...In any case, the more traits and proportions of a woman seem contrived, the more she delighted the heart of man because she seemed to escape the metamorphosis of natural things. The result is this strange paradox that by desiring to grasp nature, but transfigured, in woman, man destines her to artifice.
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Indeed, there is nothing more arbitrary than intervening as a stranger in a destiny which is not ours.
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I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth – and truth rewarded me.
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Since it is the Other within us who is old, it is natural that the revelation of our age should come to us from outside --from others. We do not accept it willingly.
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You have to start from where you are today and from what can be done.
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It is true that nothing is gained without something being lost: everyone knows that in fulfilling oneself one necessarily sacrifices some possibilities.
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But women do not say 'We', except at some congress of feminists or similar formal demonstration; men say 'women', and women use the same word in referring to themselves.
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Society turns away from the aged worker as though he belonged to another species. That is why the whole question is buried in a conspiracy of silence. Old age exposes the failure of our entire civilization.
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There has to be a certain relationship between the life and the writing style, and that is really a problem.
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To emancipate woman is to refuse to confine her to the relations she bears to man, not to deny them to her; let her have her independent existence and she will continue nonetheless to exist for him also: mutually recognising each other as subject, each will yet remain for the other an other...when we abolish the slavery of half of humanity, together with the whole system of hypocrisy that it implies, then the 'division' of humanity will reveal its genuine significance and the human couple will find its true form.
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Today, however, we are having a hard time living because we are so bent on outwitting death.
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I realized that even if we went on talking till Judgment Day, I would still find the time all too short.