Simone de Beauvoir Quotes
-
However gifted an individual is at the outset, if his or her talents cannot be developed because of his or her social condition, because of the surrounding circumstances, these talents will be still-born.
-
It's true that what you find in New York is something other than America. Only small towns and small countries are self-satisfied; a real capital goes beyond its borders.
-
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.
-
Sign of old age: distress at all leave-takings, all separations. And the sadness of memories, because I'm aware they're condemned to death.
-
There is a kind of universality in the human condition, masculine or feminine. That's one thing I continue to believe.
-
On the day when it will be possible for woman to love not in her weakness but in her strength, not to escape herself but to find herself, not to abase herself but to assert herself – on that day love will become for her, as for man, a source of life and not of mortal danger.
-
Habit has a kind of poetry.
-
Marriage is a career which brings about more benefits than many others.
-
I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth – and truth rewarded me.
-
Picasso never thought of himself as avant-garde. I just find it a bad way to think of yourself.
-
Each person has his or her own very particular history and after all, the unconscious is the most secret part of ourselves.
-
I could see no reason for being sad. It´s just that it makes me unhappy not to feel happy.
-
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.
-
I like everyone who tries to show that madness is, in large part, conditioned by society and particularly by the family, and therefore, strongly affects women.
-
From one minute to the next the present is merely an honorary past. It must be filled unceasingly anew to dissemble the curse it carries within itself; that is why Americans like speed, alcohol, thriller films and any sensational news: the demand for new things, and ever newer things, is feverish since nowhere will they rest.
-
Indeed, there is nothing more arbitrary than intervening as a stranger in a destiny which is not ours.
-
Harmony between two individuals is never granted-it has to be conquered indefinitely.
-
Dwelling-place and food are useful for life but give it no significance: the immediate goals of the housekeeper are only means, not true ends.
-
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.
-
Tragedies are all right for a while: you are concerned, you are curious, you feel good. And then it gets repetitive, it doesn't advance, it grows dreadfully boring: it is so very boring, even for me.
-
No woman should be authorized to stay at home and raise her children. Society should be totally different. Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one.
-
A man attaches himself to woman -- not to enjoy her, but to enjoy himself.
-
Women aren't more easily swayed by fascism than men, but I believe that their situation makes them in effect more slavish than men.
-
Literature takes its revenge on reality by making it the slave of fiction.