Simone de Beauvoir Quotes
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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.
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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.
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To show your true ability is always, in a sense, to surpass the limits of your ability, to go a little beyond them: to dare, to seek, to invent; it is at such a moment that new talents are revealed, discovered, and realized.
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I went to get a detective story. You have to kill time. But time will kill me too - and there´s the true, preestablished balance.
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Marriage is a career which brings about more benefits than many others.
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It's so easy to be mistaken about the future. Sometimes there are avant-gardes which believe themselves to be the avant-garde and which later find themselves to be absolutely dated.
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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 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.
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This has always been a man's world, and none of the reasons that have been offered in explanation have seemed adequate.
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Patience is one of those feminine qualities which have their origin in our oppression but should be preserved after our liberation.
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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.
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The notion of ambiguity must not be confused with that of absurdity. To declare that existence is absurd is to deny that it can ever be given a meaning; to say that it is ambiguous is to assert that its meaning is never fixed, that it must be constantly won. Absurdity challenges every ethics; but also the finished rationalization of the real would leave no room for ethics; it is because man's condition is ambiguous that he seeks, through failure and outrageousness, to save his existence.
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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.
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It's important that you think of your relationship with the world and the way you can express that world and that you not be stopped if it scandalizes or embarrasses; but you must not look for scandal or for the avant-garde as a thing in itself.
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You can't address yourself to women by speaking a language which no average woman will understand. In my opinion, it's wrong.
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Justice can never be done in the midst of injustice.
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Christianity gave eroticism its savor of sin and legend when it endowed the human female with a soul.
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Those interested in perpetuating present conditions are always in tears about the marvelous past that is about to disappear, without having so much as a smile for the young future.
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I never thought of myself as being in the avant-garde. I said what I had to say, as I was able to say it.
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If you are writing something in which you are really involved, you don't even need to think about it any longer. The situation itself demands your total commitment as an individual, just as in your political commitments.
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I think there is a great tendency toward autobiography among women today. It is perhaps facile - and I say that even though I have written one myself.
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Americans are nature-lovers: but they only admit of nature proofed and corrected by man.
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We must not confuse the present with the past. With regard to the past, no further action is possible.
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It's only arrogance if you're wrong.