Simone de Beauvoir > Quotes

“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

“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

“In itself, homosexuality is as limiting as heterosexuality: the ideal should be to be capable of loving a woman or a man; either, a human being, without feeling fear, restraint, or obligation.”
― Simone de Beauvoir

“She was ready to deny the existence of space and time rather than admit that love might not be eternal.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Mandarins

“One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, and compassion”
― 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, The Woman Destroyed

“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

“One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others.”
― Simone de Beauvoir

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

“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

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

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

“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

“All oppression creates a state of war. And this is no exception.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

“I am incapable of conceiving infinity and yet I do not accept finity.”
― Simone de Beauvoir

“I am awfully greedy; I want everything from life. I want to be a woman and to be a man, to have many friends and to have loneliness, to work much and write good books, to travel and enjoy myself, to be selfish and to be unselfish… You see, it is difficult to get all which I want. And then when I do not succeed I get mad with anger.”
― Simone de Beauvoir

“Capabilities are clearly manifested only when they have been realized.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

“There was once a man who lost his shadow. I forget what happened to him, but it was dreadful. As for me, I've lost my own image. I did not look at it often; but it was there, in the background, just as Maurice had drawn it for me. A straightforward, genuine, "authentic" woman, with out mean-mindedness, uncompromising, but at the same time understanding, indulgent, sensitive, deeply feeling, intensely aware of things and of people, passionately devoted to those she loved and creating happiness for them. A fine life, serene, full, "harmonious." It is dark: I cannot see myself anymore. And what do the others see? Maybe something hideous.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Woman Destroyed

“(What an odd thing a diary is: the things you omit are more important than those you put in.)”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Woman Destroyed

“I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom.”
― Simone de Beauvoir

“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.”
― Simone de Beauvoir

“She would never change, but one day at the touch of a fingertip she would fall to dust.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Mandarins

“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, The Second Sex

“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, The Woman Destroyed

“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

“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, The Ethics of Ambiguity

“Sex pleasure in women 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

“People seem to think that if you keep your head empty you automatically fill your balls.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Mandarins

“Some things I loved have vanished. A great many others have been given to me”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Woman Destroyed

“Even if one is neither vain nor self-obsessed, it is so extraordinary to be oneself - exactly oneself and no one else - and so unique, that it seems natural that one should also be unique for someone else.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Woman Destroyed

“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 absolute truth.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

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

“A life is such a strange object, at one moment translucent, at another utterly opaque, an object I make with my own hands, an object imposed on me, an object for which the world provides the raw material and then steals it from me again, pulverized by events, scattered, broken, scored yet retaining its unity; how heavy it is and how inconsistent: this contradiction breeds many misunderstandings.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, After the War

“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!”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Woman Destroyed

“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.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Woman Destroyed

“On ne nait pas femme, on le devient.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, Le deuxième sexe II

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

“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, The Second Sex

“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

“Because we are separated everything separates us, even our efforts to join each other.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Mandarins

“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, The Mandarins

“Today, however, we are having a hard time living because we are so bent on outwitting death.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity

“Youth and what the Italians so prettily call stamina. The vigor, the fire, that enables you to love and create. When you've lost that, you've lost everything.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Woman Destroyed

“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

“Why one man rather than another? It was odd. You find yourself involved with a fellow for life just because he was the one that you met when you were nineteen.”
― Simone de Beauvoir

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

“ '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, The Mandarins

“Oppression tries to defend itself by its utility.”
― Simone de Beauvoir

“One is not born a genius, one becomes a genius; and the feminine situation has up to the present rendered this becoming practically impossible.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

“Self-consciousness is not knowledge but a story one tells about oneself.”
― Simone de Beauvoir