Simone de Beauvoir famous quotes

Change your life today. Don't gamble on the future, act now, without delay.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Change #Positive #Inspirational Life

One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation and compassion.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Love #Life #Kindness

I am too intelligent, too demanding, and too resourceful for anyone to be able to take charge of me entirely. No one knows me or loves me completely. I have only myself
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Life And Love #Intelligent #Able

She was ready to deny the existence of space and time rather than admit that love might not be eternal.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Love #Romantic #Space

All oppression creates a state of war.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#War #Historical #Oppression

I am incapable of conceiving infinity, and yet I do not accept finity.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Infinity #Accepting

If you live long enough, you'll see that every victory turns into a defeat.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#War #Long #Victory

It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our lives that we must draw our strength to live and our reasons for living.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Life #Positive #Reason

Marriage is a career which brings about more benefits than many others.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Marriage #Careers #Benefits

The point is not for women simply to take power out of men’s hands, since that wouldn’t change anything about the world. It’s a question precisely of destroying that notion of power.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Men #Hands #World

I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Inspirational #Freedom #4th Of July

The most mediocre of males feels himself a demigod as compared with women.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Women #Equality #Males

There is something in the New York air that makes sleep useless.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Travel #New York #Sleep

The curse which lies upon marriage is that too often the individuals are joined in their weakness rather than in their strength -each asking from the other instead of finding pleasure in giving. It is even more deceptive to dream of gaining through the child a plenitude, a warmth, a value, which one is unable to create for oneself; the child brings joy only to the woman who is capable of disinterestedly desiring the happiness of another, to one who without being wrapped up in self seeks to transcend her own existence.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Dream #Children #War

What is an adult? A child blown up by age.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Birthday #Time #Children

I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth - and truth rewarded me.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Inspirational #Truth #Comfort

Buying is a profound pleasure.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Shopping #Profound #Buying

You have never had any confidence in him. And if he has no confidence in himself it is because he sees himself through your eyes.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Eye #No Confidence

No one is more arrogant toward women, more aggressive or scornful, than the man who is anxious about his virility.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Men #Arrogant #Aggressive

Be loved, be admired, be necessary; be somebody.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

When I was a child, when I was an adolescent, books saved me from despair: that convinced me that culture was the highest of values[...].
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Children #Book #Despair

If the feminine issue is so absurd, is because the male's arrogance made it "a discussion
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Issues #Arrogance #Males

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 ...
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Aging #Strange #Ends

Old age was growing inside me. It kept catching my eye from the depths of the mirror. I was paralyzed sometimes as I saw it making its way toward me so steadily when nothing inside me was ready for it.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Eye #Mirrors #Age

It is not in giving life but in risking life that man is raised above the animal; that is why superiority has been accorded in humanity not to the sex that brings forth but to that which kills.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Life #Death #Sex

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.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Mind #Way #Granted

Literature is born when something in life goes slightly adrift.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Library #Adrift #Literature

Self-knowledge is no guarantee of happiness, but it is on the side of happiness and can supply the courage to fight for it.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Fighting #Self #Guarantees

The characteristic feature of all ethics is to consider human life as a game that can be won or lost and to teach man the means of winning.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Mean #Winning #Men

One can not start by saying our earthly destiny has or has not importance, for it depends on us to give it importance.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Destiny #Giving #Importance

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.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Suicide #Hate #Reality

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.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Individuality #Talent #Social

No existence can be validly fulfilled if it is limited to itself.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Existential #Existence #Fulfilled

The fact that we are human beings is infinitely more important than all the peculiarities that distinguish human beings from one another.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Helping Others #People #Humanity

The ideal of happiness has always taken material form in the house, whether cottage or castle; it stands for permanence and separation from the world.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Taken #Home #House

To lose confidence in one’s body is to lose confidence in oneself.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Self Esteem #Bad Day #Eating Disorder

I realized that even if we went on talking till Judgment Day, I would still find the time all too short.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Talking #Judgment #Too Short

That's what I consider true generosity: You give your all, and yet you always feel as if it costs you nothing.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Inspirational #Insperational #Giving

Regardless of the staggering dimensions of the world about us, the density of our ignorance, the risks of catastrophes to come, and our individual weakness within the immense collectivity, the fact remains that we are absolutely free today if we choose to will our existence in its finiteness, a finiteness which is open on the infinite. And in fact, any man who has known real loves, real revolts, real desires, and real will knows quite well that he has no need of any outside guarantee to be sure of his goals; their certitude comes from his own drive.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Philosophy #Real #Ignorance

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.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Children #Men #Firsts

Because we are separated everything separates us, even our efforts to join each other.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Effort

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.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Morning #Princess #Lovely

A man attaches himself to woman -- not to enjoy her, but to enjoy himself.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Men #Enjoy

A couple who go on living together merely because that was how they began, without any other reason: was that what we were turning into?
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Couple #Together #Goes On

Weakness' is weakness only in light of the aims man sets for himself, the instruments at his disposal and the laws he imposes.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Men #Law #Light

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." (p. 248)
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Adventure #Two #Risk

To be oneself, simply oneself, is so amazing and utterly unique an experience that it's hard to convince oneself so singular a thing happens to everybody.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Unique #Convince #Oneself

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.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Couple #Independent #Men

He reflected. 'I know a lot of different kids of people; what I want is to show each of them how the others really are. You hear so many lies!
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Lying #Kids #People

all success cloaks a surrender
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Surrender #Cloaks

‎A day in which I don't write leaves a taste of ashes.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Writing #Taste #Ashes

...counselling man to treat her as a slave while persuading her that she is a queen.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Queens #Men #Slave

I was made for another planet altogether. I mistook the way.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Way #Planets #Made

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.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Men #Feminist #Use

To be free is not to have the power to do anything you like; it is to be able to surpass the given toward an open future.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Able #You Like It #Given

The torment that so many young women know, bound hand and foot by love and motherhood, without having forgotten their former dreams.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Dream #Women #Motherhood

What an odd thing a diary is: the things you omit are more important than those you put in.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Important #Odd Things #Diaries

Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with the absolute truth.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Inspiring #Men #Views

Each of us is responsible for everything and to every human being.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Responsible #Humans

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.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Children #Home #Choices

Art is an attempt to integrate evil.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Art #Evil #Integrating

The body is not a thing, it is a situation: it is our grasp on the world and our sketch of our project
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Body #World #Projects

This has always been a man's world, and none of the reasons that have been offered in explanation have seemed adequate.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Philosophy #Men #World

The writer of originality, unless dead, is always shocking, scandalous; novelty disturbs and repels.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Powerful #Writing #Bad Ass

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.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Couple #Justice #Hypocrisy

People seem to think that if you keep your head empty you automatically fill your balls.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Thinking #People #Balls

Defending the truth is not something one does out of a sense of duty or to allay guilt complexes, but is a reward in itself.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Truth #Guilt #Doe

There is only one solution if old age is not to be an absurd parody of our former life, and that is to go on pursuing ends that give our existence a meaning.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Giving #Age #Goes On

She would never change, but one day at the touch of a fingertip she would fall to dust.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Fall #Dust #One Day

Man is defined as a human being and a woman as a female - whenever she behaves as a human being she is said to imitate the male.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Inspiring #Men #Males

The word love has by no means the same sense for both sexes, and this is one cause of the serious misunderstandings that divide them.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Sex #Women #Mean

One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Age #Born

Few tasks are more like the torture of Sisyphus than housework, with its endless repetition: the clean becomes soiled, the soiled is made clean, over and over, day after day.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Tasks #Cleaning #Made

Life is occupied in both perpetuating itself and in surpassing itself; if all it does is maintain itself, then living is only not dying.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Life #Inspire #Dying

I am incapable of conceiving infinity, and yet I do not accept finity. I want this adventure that is the context of my life to go on without end.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Adventure #Want #Infinity

It was easier for me to think of a world without a creator than of a creator loaded with all the contradictions of the world.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Atheist #Thinking #World

There is only one good. And that is to act according to the dictates of one's conscience.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Conscience

Sex pleasure in woman is a kind of magic spell; it demands complete abandon; if words or movements oppose the magic of caresses, the spell is broken.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Sex #Broken #Magic

Today, however, we are having a hard time living because we are so bent on outwitting death.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Hard Times #Today #Existentialism

Capabilities are clearly manifested only when they have been realized.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Capability

As long as there have been men and they have lived, they have all felt this tragic ambiguity of their condition, but as long as there have been philosophers and they have thought, most of them have tried to mask it.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Men #Long #Philosopher

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.
-- Simone de Beauvoir

#Memories #Waiting #Racing