Simone de Beauvoir Quotes
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Therefore the misfortune which comes to man as a result of the fact that he was a child is that his freedom was first concealed from him and that all his life he will be nostalgic for the time when he did not know it's exigencies.
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Woman is determined not by her hormones or by mysterious instincts, but by the manner in which her body and her relation to the world are modified through the action of others than herself.
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Justice can never be done in the midst of injustice.
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Harmony between two individuals is never granted-it has to be conquered indefinitely.
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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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The knight departing for new adventures offends his lady, yet she has nothing but contempt for him if he remains at her feet.
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She offered her mouth to him, as if enchanted. A Persian princess, a little Indian, a fox, a morning glory, a lovely wisteria--it always pleased them when you told them they looked like something, like something else.
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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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One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation and compassion.
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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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La femme?sait que quand on la regarde on ne la distingue pas de son apparence: elle est juge e, respecte e, de sire e a' travers sa toilette. Woman?knows that when she is looked at she is not considered apart from her appearance: she is judged, respected, desired, by and through her toilette.
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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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The Communists, following Hegel, speak of humanity and its future as of some monolithic individuality. I was attacking this illusion.
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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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I think that The Second Sex will seem an old, dated book, after a while. But nonetheless, a book which will have made its contribution. At least, I hope so.
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I consider it almost antifeminist to say that there is a feminine nature which expresses itself differently, that a woman speaks her body more than a man, because after all, men also speak their bodies when they write. Everything is implicated in the work of a writer.
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People seem to think that if you keep your head empty you automatically fill your balls.
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History is a great cemetery: men, deeds, ideas are always dying as soon as they are born.
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Why does one exist? That's not my problem. One does exist. The thing to do is to take no notice but go at it on the run and to keep on going right on until you die.
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She was not to look beyond herself for the meaning of her life.
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It's true that this is one of the problems which often arises among my radical, revolutionary feminist friends: Do you have to join the system or not? On the one hand, if you don't, you risk being ineffectual. But if you do, from that moment on, you place your feminism at the service of a system which you want to take apart.
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One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. No biological, psychological, or economic fate determines the figure that the human female presents in society; it is civilization as a whole that produces this creature, intermediate between male and eunuch, which is described as feminine.
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When women act like women, they are accused of being inferior. When women act like human beings, they are accused of behaving like men.
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The earthly meaning of eternal life was death, and she refused to die.