Barberine

“At night I would climb the steps to the Sacre-Coeur, and I would watch Paris, that futile oasis, scintillating in the wilderness of space. I would weep, because it was so beautiful, and because it was so useless.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter

“I couldn't have accepted a man whose thoughts and work were an Enigma to me; love would be a justification not a limitation. the picture I can't it up in my mind was a very steep climb in which my partner, a little more agile and stronger than myself, would help me from one stage to the next. I was grasping rather than generous. if I had to drag someone along beside me, I should have been consumed with impatience. a life in common would have to favour, and not stand in the way of, my fundamental aim, which was to conquer the world. the man destined to be mine would be neither inferior nor different, nor outrageously superior; someone who would guarantee my existence without taking away my powers of self-determination.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter

“The secret of happiness and the very height of artistic achievement is to be like everybody else, yet to be like no one on earth.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter

“All those minds that are interested in finding out the truth communicate with each other across the distances of space and time. I, too, was taking part in the effort which humanity makes to know.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter