Simone de Beauvoir

“It is old age, rather than death, that is to be contrasted with life. Old age is life's parody, whereas death transforms life into a destiny: in a way it preserves it by giving it the absolute dimension. Death does away with time.”

“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.”

“When an individual is kept in a situation of inferiority, the fact is that he does become inferior.”

“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.”

“Art is an attempt to integrate evil.”

“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”

“This has always been a man's world, and none of the reasons that have been offered in explanation have seemed adequate.”

“The writer of originality, unless dead, is always shocking, scandalous; novelty disturbs and repels.”

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

“I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom.”

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

“One is not born a woman, but becomes one.”

“Life is occupied in both perpetuating itself and in surpassing itself; if all it does is maintain itself, then living is only not dying.”

“In the face of an obstacle which is impossible to overcome, stubbornness is stupid.”

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

“What is an adult? A child blown up by age.”

“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.”

“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.”

“To make oneself an object, to make oneself passive, is a very different thing from being a passive object.”

“All the idols made by man, however terrifying they may be, are in point of fact subordinate to him, and that is why he will always have it in his power to destroy them.”

“Retirement may be looked upon either as a prolonged holiday or as a rejection, a being thrown on to the scrap-heap.”

“Change your life today. Don't gamble on the future, act now, without delay.”

“In oppressing, one becomes oppressed. Men are enchained by reason of their very sovereignty; it is because they alone earn money that their wives demand checks, it is because they alone engage in a business or profession that their wives require them to be successful, it is because they alone embody transcendence that their wives wish to rob them of it by taking charge...”

“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.”

“Change your life today. Don't gamble on the future, act now, without delay.”

“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.”

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

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

“Art is an attempt to integrate evil.”

“I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom.”

“The power he exercises is no more dictatorial than, for example, Roosevelt's was.”

“The Communists, following Hegel, speak of humanity and its future as of some monolithic individuality. I was attacking this illusion.”

“I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom.”

“It's frightening to think that you mark your children merely by being yourself... It seems unfair. You can't assume the responsibility for everything you do — or don't do.”

“What is an adult? A child blown up by age.”

“I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth — and truth rewarded me.”

“We were two of a kind, and our relationship would endure as long as we did: but it could not make up entirely for the fleeting riches to be had from encounters with different people.”

“Insects were scurrying about in the shade cast by the grass, and the lawn was a huge monotonous forest of thousands of little green blades, all equal, all alike, hiding the world from each other. Anguished, she thought, "I don't want to be just another blade of grass."”

“She was beautiful, with a beauty so severe and so solitary that at first it was startling. "Ah! If only there were two of me," she thought, "one doing the talking and one listening, one living and one watching, how I would love myself. I'd envy no one."”

“Time is beginning to flow again.”

“If I had amnesia, I'd be almost like other men. Perhaps I'd even be able to love you.”

“You made me come to Paris. You pestered me to start living again. Well, now it's up to you to make my life livable. You mustn't let three whole days go by without coming to see me. … You wanted me to take notice of you. Now nothing else matters to me. I know you're alive and I feel emptiness inside me when you're away.”

“I'm never afraid. But in my case it's nothing to be proud of.”

“He walks in the street, a picture of modesty in his felt hat and his gabardine suit, and all the while he's thinking, "I'm immortal." The world is his, time is his, and I'm nothing but an insect.”

“One day I'll be old, dead, forgotten. And at this very moment, while I'm sitting here thinking these things, a man in a dingy hotel room is thinking, "I will always be here."”

“He had not applauded, he had remained seated, but he had looked at her steadily. From the depths of eternity he had looked at her and Rosalind became immortal. If I could believe him, she thought, if only I could believe him!”

“To catch a husband is an art; to hold him is a job.”

“They were walking side by side, but each was alone.”

“Be loved, be admired, be necessary; be somebody.”

“I was born in Italy on the 17th May 1279 in a castle in the city of Carmona.”

“Even the children of Carmona were divided into two camps, and below the ramparts, among the brushwood and rocks, we battled with stones shouting "Long live the duke!" and others, "Down with the tyrant!" We fought viciously, but I was never satisfied with this game — the fallen enemy rose again, the dead came back to life. The day after a battle, victors and vanquished both found themselves unharmed.”

“For the first time in my life, I took part in a real battle between men. The dead did not come to life again, the vanquished fled in disorder; every thrust of my lance helped save Carmona. That day, I would have died with a smile on my lips, certain of having contributed to a triumphant future for my city.”

“It was as though some stubborn god spent their time in an immutable and absurd balancing act between life and death, prosperity and poverty.”

“There is only one good. And that is to act according to the dictates of one's conscience.”

“What did today's sacrifices matter: the Universe lay ahead in the future. What did burnings at the stake and massacres matter? The Universe was somewhere else, always somewhere else! And it isn't anywhere: there are only men, men eternally divided.”

“What has value in their eyes is never what is done for them; it's what they do for themselves.”

“It is impossible to do anything for anyone.”

“Were we really more advanced than the alchemists of Carmona? We had brought to light certain facts that they were not aware of, we had organised them into the right order; but had we advanced even a step nearer to the mysterious heart of the universe?”

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

“After wars peace, after peace, another war. Every day men are born and others die.”

“Try to stay a man amongst men … There's no other hope for you.”

“In horror, in terror, she accepted the metamorphosis — gnat, foam, ant, until death. And it's only the beginning, she thought. She stood motionless, as if it were possible to play tricks with time, possible to stop it from following its course. But her hands stiffened against her quivering lips. When the bells began to sound the hour she let out the first scream.”

“At the present time there still exist many doctrines which choose to leave in the shadow certain troubling aspects of a too complex situation. But their attempt to lie to us is in vain. Cowardice doesn’t pay. Those reasonable metaphysics, those consoling ethics with which they would like to entice us only accentuate the disorder from which we suffer.”

“What an odd thing a diary is: the things you omit are more important than those you put in.”

“Men of today seem to feel more acutely than ever the paradox of their condition. They know themselves to be the supreme end to which all action should be subordinated, but the exigencies of action force them to treat one another as instruments or obstacles, as means. The more widespread their mastery of the world, the more they find themselves crushed by uncontrollable forces.”

“To will freedom and to will to disclose being are one and the same choice; hence, freedom takes a positive and constructive step which causes being to pass to existence in a movement which is constantly surpassed.”

“Science condemns itself to failure when, yielding to the infatuation of the serious, it aspires to attain being, to contain it, and to possess it; but it finds its truth if it considers itself as a free engagement of thought in the given, aiming, at each discovery, not at fusion with the thing, but at the possibility of new discoveries; what the mind then projects is the concrete accomplishment of its freedom.”

“A conquest of this kind is never finished; the contingency remains, and, so that he may assert his will, man is even obliged to stir up in the world the outrage he does not want. But this element of failure is a very condition of his life; one can never dream of eliminating it without immediately dreaming of death. This does not mean that one should consent to failure, but rather one must consent to struggle against it without respite.”

“All agree in recognising the fact that females exist in the human species; today as always they make up about one half of humanity. And yet we are told that femininity is in danger; we are exhorted to be women, remain women, become women. It would appear, then, that every female human being is not necessarily a woman; to be so considered she must share in that mysterious and threatened reality known as femininity.”

“The present enshrines the past—and in the past all history has been made by men.”

“It is doubtless impossible to approach any human problems with a mind free from bias.”

“One is not born a genius, one becomes a genius; and the feminine situation has up to the present rendered this becoming practically impossible.”

“Sex pleasure in woman, as I have said, is a kind of magic spell; it demands complete abandon; if words or movements oppose the magic of caresses, the spell is broken.”

“From primitive times to our own, intercourse has always been considered a "service" for which the male thanks the woman by giving her presents or assuring her maintenance; but to serve is to give oneself a master; there is no reciprocity in this relation.”

“The fear of death never left me; I couldn't get used to the thought; I would still sometimes shake and weep with terror. By contrast, the fact of existence here and now sometimes took on a glorious splendour.”

“To "catch" a husband is an art; to "hold" him is a job.”

“Cooking is revelation and creation; and a woman can find special satisfaction in a successful cake or a flaky pastry, for not every one can do it: one must have the gift.”

“We must not believe, certainly, that a change in woman’s economic condition alone is enough to transform her, though this factor has been and remains the basic factor in her evolution; but until it has brought about the moral, social, cultural, and other consequences that it promises and requires, the new woman cannot appear.”

“It is old age, rather than death, that is to be contrasted with life. Old age is life's parody, whereas death transforms life into a destiny: in a way it preserves it by giving it the absolute dimension. Death does away with time.”

“The humanity of tomorrow will be living in its flesh and in its conscious liberty; that time will be its present and it will in turn prefer it. New relations of flesh and sentiment of which we have no conception will arise between the sexes; already, indeed, there have appeared between men and women friendships, rivalries, complicities, comradeships — chaste or sensual — which past centuries could not have conceived.”

“It is for man to establish the reign of liberty in the midst of the world of the given. To gain the supreme victory, it is necessary, for one thing, that by and through their natural differentiation men and women unequivocally affirm their brotherhood.”

“Work almost always has a double aspect: it is a bondage, a wearisome drudgery; but it is also a source of interest, a steadying element, a factor that helps to integrate the worker with society. Retirement may be looked upon either as a prolonged holiday or as a rejection, a being thrown on to the scrap-heap.”

“Since it is the Other within us who is old, it is natural that the revelation of our age should come to us from outside — from others. We do not accept it willingly.”

“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.”

“It is old age, rather than death, that is to be contrasted with life. Old age is life's parody, whereas death transforms life into a destiny: in a way it preserves it by giving it the absolute dimension. Death does away with time.”

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

“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.”

“Change your life today. Don't gamble on the future, act now, without delay.”

“Change your life today. Don't gamble on the future, act now, without delay.”

“Change your life today. Don't gamble on the future, act now, without delay.”

“To catch a husband is an art; to hold him is a job.”

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

“The most mediocre of males feels himself a demigod as compared with women.”

“Society cares for the individual only so far as he is profitable.”

“I am incapable of conceiving infinity, and yet I do not accept finity.”

“Today, however, we are having a hard time living because we are so bent on outwitting death.”

“All oppression creates a state of war.”

“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.”

“Buying is a profound pleasure.”

“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.”

“Society, being codified by man, decrees that woman is inferior; she can do away with this inferiority only by destroying the male's superiority.”