The Coming of Age Quotes

“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 , La vieillesse

“The past is not a peaceful landscape lying there behind me, a country in which I can stroll wherever I please, and will gradually show me all its secret hills and dales. As I was moving forward, so it was crumbling. Most of the wreckage that can be seen is colourless, distorted, frozen: its meaning escapes me... all that's left is a skeleton. I shall never find my plans again, my hopes and fears - I shall not find myself.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, Old Age

“Society cares about the individual only in so far as he is profitable. The young know this. Their anxiety as they enter in upon social life matches the anguish of the old as they are excluded from it.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Coming of Age

“one can never know oneself but only narrate oneself”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Coming of Age

“C'est le crime de notre société. Sa "politique de la vieillesse" est scandaleuse. Mais le traitement le plus scandaleux encore est le traitement qu'elle inflige à la majorité des hommes au temps de leur jeunesse et de leur maturité. Elle préfabrique la condition mutilée et misérable qui est leur lot dans leur dernier âge. C'est par sa faute que la déchéance sénile commence prématurément, qu'elle est rapide, physiquement douloureuse, moralement affreuse parce qu'ils l'abordent les mains vides. Des individus exploités, aliénés, quand leurs forces les quittent, deviennent fatalement des "rebuts", des "déchets".”
― Simone de Beauvoir, La vieillesse I Simone de Beauvoir