Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter Quotes

“Be loved, be admired, be necessary; be somebody.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter

“…but all day long I would be training myself to think, to understand, to criticize, to know myself; I was seeking for the absolute truth: this preoccupation did not exactly encourage polite conversation.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter

“The books I liked became a Bible from which I drew advice and support; I copied out long passages from them; I memorized new canticles and new litanies, psalms, proverbs, and prophecies, and I sanctified every incident in my life by the recital of these sacred texts. My emotions, my tears, and my hopes were no less sincere on account of that; the words and the cadences, the lines and the verses were not aids to make believe: but they rescued from silent oblivion all those intimate adventures of the spirit that I couldn’t speak to anyone about; they created a kind of communion between myself and those twin souls which existed somewhere out of reach; instead of living out my small private existence, I was participating in a great spiritual epic.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter

“all success cloaks a surrender”
― Simone de Beauvoir, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter

“لقد كان وحيداً، وكان حرًا”
― سيمون دي بوفوار, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter

“I was very fond of Lagneau’s phrase: “I have no comfort but in my absolute despair.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter

“In fact, the sickness I was suffering from was that I had been driven out of the paradise of childhood and had not found my place in the world of adults. I had set myself up in the absolute in order to gaze down upon this world which was rejecting me; now, if I wanted to act, to write a book, to express myself, I would have to go back down there: but my contempt had annihilated it, and I could see nothing but emptiness. The fact is that I had not yet put my hand to the plow. Love, action, literary work: all I did was to roll these ideas round in my head; I was fighting in an abstract fashion against abstract possibilities, and I had come to the conclusion that reality was of the most pitiful insignificance. I was hoping to hold fast to something, and misled by the violence of this indefinite desire, I was confusing it with the desire for the infinite.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter

“إن اللذة تبقى قذرة إذا لم تصهر بنار العاطفة”
― سيمون دي بوفوار, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter

“في الريف كنت أحس هناك وجود الله أكثر مما كنت أحسه في باريس. و كنت كلما التصقت بالأرض كلماازددت قرباً منه، و كانت كل نزهة صلاة له. كان يخيل إلي أنه على نحو ما بحاجة إلى عينيّ لتكون للأشجار ألوانها. و حرارة الشمس، و رطوبةالندى، أنى لذهن مجرد أن يحسهما إلا عبر جسدي؟ لقد جعل هذه الأرض للبشر، و جعل البشر ليشهدوا بمحاسنها. و حين كنت أجتاز في الصباح الحواجز لأوغل في الغابات فإنما هو الذي كان يناديني، و كان ينظر إلي بفرح و أنا أنظر إلى هذا العالم الذي خلقه لأراه.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter

“إني مرصودة للوحدة .......”
― سيمون دو بوفوار, مذكرات فتاة ملتزمة

“Alone: for the first time I understood the terrible significance of that word. Alone without a witness, without anyone to speak to, without refuge. The breath in my body, the blood in my veins, all this hurly-burly in my head existed for nobody.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter

“أكثر ما كان يجذبني إليه ضحكته: فكأنما سقط، من غير انتظار، على كوكب ليس هو كوكبه، فأخذ يكتشف طرافته العجيبة. و حين كانت ضحكته تنفجر، كان كل شيء يبدو لي جديداً، أخاذاً، رائعاً.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter

“لقد كنت أشعر برضى غامر أن أعرف أني خارج القانون”
― سيمون دي بوفوار, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter

“On the evenings when my parents held parties, the drawing-room mirrors multiplied to infinity the scintillations of a crystal chandelier. Mama would take her seat at the grand piano to accompany a lady dressed in a cloud of tulle who played the violin and a cousin who performed on a cello. I would crack between my teeth the candied shell of an artificial fruit, and a burst of light would illuminate my palate with a taste of blackcurrant or pineapple: all the colours, all the lights were mine, the gauzy scarves, the diamonds, the laces; I held the whole party in my mouth.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter

“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

“Les livres que j'aimais devinrent une Bible où je puisais des conseils et des secours. ”
― Simone de Beauvoir, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter

“وكنت أبكي لأن هذا كان جميلًا إلى هذا الحد، ولأنه كان لا مجديًا”
― سيمون دي بوفوار, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter

“كنت أعتقد أن الانسان ليس بوسعه أن يحب من غير ان يكره ”
― سيمون دو بوفوار, مذكرات فتاة ملتزمة

“من المريع جداً أن يتسلى المرء حين لا يشعر باي حاجة للتسلية”
― سيمون دو بوفوار, مذكرات فتاة ملتزمة

“Literature took the place in my life that had once been occupied by religion: it absorbed me entirely, and transfigured my life.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter

“It was easier for me to think of a world without a creator than of a creator burdened with all the contradictions in the world.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter

“لم تفتح لي الفلسفة السماء ولم ترسني في الأرض.”
― سيمون دي بوفوار, 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

“تعلمت ألم الوجود، لقد نُفيت من جنة الطفولة و لم أجد مكاناً بين الكبار .”
― سيمون دي بوفوار, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter

“The thing I understood least of all was that knowledge led to despair and damnation. Our spiritual mentor had not said that those bad books had given a false picture of life: if that had been the case, he could easily have exposed their falsehood; the tragedy of the little girl whom he had failed to bring to salvation was that she had made a premature discovery of the true nature of reality. Well, anyhow, I thought, I shall discover it myself one day, and it isn’t going to kill me: the idea that there was a certain age when knowledge of the truth could prove fatal I found offensive to common sense.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter

“I've no personality,' I would tell myself. My curiosity embraced everything; I believed in an absolute truth, in the need for moral law; my thoughts adapted themselves to their objects; if occasionally one of them took me by surprise, it was because it reflected something that was surprising. I preferred good to evil and despised that which should be despised. I could find no trace of my own subjectivity. I had wanted myself to be boundless, and I had become as shapeless as the infinite. The paradox was that I became aware of this deficiency at the very moment when I discovered my individuality; my universal aspiration had seemed to me until then to exist in its own right; but now it had become a character trait: 'Simone is interested in everything.' I found myself limited by my refusal to be limited.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter

“كم هو كليّ حضور الإنسان،وكم هو جذري غيابه.”
― سيمون دي بوفوار, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter

“Mais le pire, quand on habite une prison sans barreaux, c'est qu'on n'a pas même conscience des écrans qui bouchent l'horizon; j'errais à travers un épais brouillard, et je le croyais transparent. Les choses qui m'échappaient, je n'en entrevoyais même pas la présence.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter

“Literature takes its revenge on reality by making it the slave of fiction.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter

“I was no longer a vacant mind, an abstracted gaze, but the turbulent fragrance of the waving grain, the intimate smell of the heather moors, the dense heat of noon or the shiver of twilight; I was heavy; yet I was as vapour in the blue airs of summer and knew no bounds.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter