Beauvoir Quotes

The truth is, however, that when two individuals detest each other, while being unable to get along without each other, it is not of all human relations the truest and most moving, but rather the most pitiable. ~ 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

The fact is that a true human privilege is based upon the anatomical privilege only in virtue of the total situation. Psychoanalysis can establish its truths only in the historical context. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

Faith allows an evasion of those difficulties which the atheist confronts honestly. And to crown all, the believer derives a sense of great superiority from this very cowardice itself. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

I was too much of an extremist to be able to live under the eye of God and at the same time say both yes and no to life ~ Simone De Beauvoir

Humans are the beings whose essence is in not having an essence ~ Simone De Beauvoir

From the origins of humanity, their biological privilege enabled men to affirm themselves alone as sovereign subjects; they never abdicated this privilege; they alienated part of their existence in Nature and in Woman; but they won it back afterward; condemned to play the role of the Other, woman was thus condemned to possess no more than precarious power: slave or idol, she was never the one who chose her lot. "Men make gods and women worship them," said Frazer; it is men who decide if their supreme divinities will be females or males; the place of woman in society is always the one they assign her; at no time has she imposed her own law. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

Resistance put up by the old capitalist paternalism prevents this equality from being concretely achieved: it will be achieved the day this resistance is broken down. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

They don't like being seen through: as for me I'm straight I don't join their act I tear masks off. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

Surviving one's own life, living on the other side of it like a spectator, is quite comfortable after all. You no longer expect anything, no longer fear anything, and every hour is like a memory. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

A man is in the right in being a man; it is the woman who is in the wrong. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

Because we are separated everything separates us, even our efforts to join each other. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

To be a woman, if not a defect, is at least a peculiarity. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

What is an adult? A child blown up by age. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

An enormous round egg snatching and castrating the agile sperm;
monstorous and stuffed, the queen termite reigning over the servile
males; the praying mantis and the spider, gorged on love, crushing
their partners and gobbling them up; the dog in heat running through
back alleys, leaving perverse smells in her wake; the monkey showing
herself off brazenly, sneaking away with flirtatious hypocrisy. And
the most splendid wildcats, the tigress, lioness, and panther, lie
down slavishly under the male's imperial embrace, inert, impatient,
shrewd, stupid, insensitive, lewd, fierce, and humiliated ~ Simone De Beauvoir

This privilege, which he alone possesses, of being a sovereign and unique subject amidst a universe of objects, is what he shares with all his fellow-men. In turn an object for others, he is nothing more than an individual in the collectivity on which he depends. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

The state of emotional intoxication allows one to grasp existence in one's self and in the other, as both subjectivity and passivity. The two partners merge in this ambiguous unity; each one is freed of his own presence and achieves immediate communication with the other. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

One of the problems he will seek to solve is how to make his wife both a servant and a companion; his attitude will evolve throughout the centuries, and this will also entail an evolution in woman's destiny.11 ~ Simone De Beauvoir

Old age is life's parody. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

I was still keenly aware as in my childhood of the inexplicable nature of my presence here on earth; where had I come from here; where was I going? I often thought about these things with a kind of stupefied horror and used to fill my diary with long self-communings ~ Simone De Beauvoir

Every individual concerned to justify his existence feels that his existence involves an undefined need to transcend himself, to engage in freely chosen projects. pg. xxxiii ~ Simone De Beauvoir

My worst mistake has been not grasping that time goes by. It was going by and there I was, set in the attitude of the ideal wife of an ideal husband. Instead of bringing our sexual relationship to life again I brooded happily over memories of our former nights together. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

He formed his sentences hesitantly and then threw them at me with such force that I felt as if I were receiving a present each time ~ Simone De Beauvoir

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

If she could inherit, she would thus wrongly transmit her paternal family's riches to that of her husband: she is carefully excluded from the succession. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

Patience is one of those feminine qualities which have their origin in our oppression but should be preserved after our liberation. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

He would talk and talk and talk; the twilight would fill with cigarette smoke and shimmering words would tremble in the blue coils of air... ~ Simone De Beauvoir

Immortality is a terrible curse. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

The passionate man seeks possession; he seeks to attain being. The failure and the hell which he creates for himself have been described often enough. He causes certain rare treasures to appear in the world, but he also ~ Simone De Beauvoir

I would have liked to have given a frank and balanced account of my own sexuality ... because it is not just a personal matter but a political one too." Beauvoir ~ Hazel Rowley

You said something very true the other day: that for us, nudity begins with the face. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

Women's mutual understanding comes from the fact that they identify themselves with each other; but for the same reason each is against the others. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

For the first time I saw her as a dead body under suspended sentence. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

The nearer I come to the end of my days, the more I am enabled to see that strange thing, a life, and to see it whole ... ~ Simone De Beauvoir

The individual is defined only by his relationship to the world and to other individuals; he exists only by transcending himself, and his freedom can be achieved only through the freedom of others. He justifies his existence by a movement which, like freedom, springs from his heart but which leads outside of himself. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

I quickly realized that friendships without tomorrows, and the little anguishes of parting, were part of the pleasures of traveling. I resolutely avoided bores, saw only those who amused me. We spent afternoons taking long walks, nights drinking and talking, and then we would leave each other, never to meet again, and there were no regrets. How simple life was. No regrets, no obligations, my acts and gestures counted for nothing, no one asked my advice, and I knew no other rule but my whims. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

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

The human species is forever in a state of change, forever becoming. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

The curse which lies upon marriage is that too often the individuals are joined in their weakness rather than in their strength, each asking from the other instead of finding pleasure in giving. It is even more deceptive to dream of gaining through the child a plenitude, a warmth, a value, which one is unable to create for oneself; the child brings joy only to the woman who is capable of disinterestedly desiring the happiness of another, to one who without being wrapped up in self seeks to transcend her own existence. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

When he describes woman, each writer discloses his general ethics and the special idea he has of himself; and in her he often betrays also the gap between his world view and his egotistical dreams. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

By the time humankind reaches the stage of writing its mythology and laws, patriarchy is definitively established: it is males who write the codes. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

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. Though they are masters of the atomic bomb, yet it is created only to destroy them. Each one has the incomparable taste in his mouth of his own life, and yet each feels himself more insignificant than an insect within the immense collectivity whose limits are one with the earth's. Perhaps in no other age have they manifested their grandeur more brilliantly, and in no other age has this grandeur been so horribly flouted. In spite of so many stubborn lies, at every moment, at every opportunity, the truth comes to light, the truth of life and death, of my solitude and my bond with the world, of my freedom and my servitude, of the insignificance and the sovereign importance of each man and all men. ~ 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

That the child is the supreme aim of woman is a statement having precisely the value of an advertising slogan. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

Existence must be asserted in the present if one does not want all life to be defined as an escape toward nothingness. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

The fact that we are human beings is infinitely more important than all the peculiarities that distinguish human beings from one another; it is never the given that confers superiorities: 'virtue', as the ancients called it, is defined on the level of 'that which depends on us'. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

Self-consciousness is not knowledge but a story one tells about oneself. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

My contemplation is an excruciation only because it is also a joy. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

Society cares for the individual only so far as he is profitable. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

One understands now the drama that rends the adolescent girl at puberty: she cannot become "a grown-up" without accepting her femininity ~ Simone De Beauvoir

In every society the artist or writer remains an outsider ... ~ Simone De Beauvoir

There is something in the New York air that makes sleep useless. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

It's not a very big step from contentment to complacency. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

These women are, quite simply, alive; they know that the source of true values is not in external things but in human hearts. This gives its charm to the world they live in: they banish ennui by the simple fact of their presence, with their dreams, their desires, their pleasures, their emotions, their ingenuities. The sanseverina, that 'active soul' dreads ennui more than death. To stagnate in ennui 'is to keep from dying, she said, not to live'; she is ' always impassioned over something, always in action and gay too '. Thoughtless, childish or profound, gay or grave, daring or secretive, they all reject the heavy sleep in which humanity is mired. And these women who have been able to maintain their liberty- empty as it has been- will rise through passion to heroism once they find an objective worthy of them; their spiritual power, their energy, suggest the fierce purity of total dedication ~ Simone De Beauvoir

Only man can be an enemy for man; only he can rob him of the meaning of his acts and his life because it also belongs only to him alone to confirm it in its existence, to recognize it in actual fact as a freedom ~ Simone De Beauvoir

A man would never get the notion of writing a book on the peculiar situation of the human male. ~ 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

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. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

Marriage is a career which brings about more benefits than many others. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

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

One is not conceived a lady, one turns into one. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

A freedom which is interested only in denying freedom must be denied. And it is not true that the recognition of the freedom of others limits my own freedom: to be free is not to have the power to do anything you like; it is to be able to surpass the given toward an open future; the existence of others as a freedom defines my situation and is even the condition of my own freedom. I am oppressed if I am thrown into prison, but not if I am kept from throwing my neighbor into prison. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

Change your life today. Don't gamble on the future, act now, without delay. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

It is so difficult not to become vain about one's own good luck. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

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. Is this attribute something secreted by the ovaries? Or is it Platonic essence, a product of the philosophic imagination? Is a rustling petticoat enough to bring it down to earth? ~ Simone De Beauvoir

The reason Armand Gamache could go there was because it wasn't totally foreign to him. He knew it because he'd seen his own burned terrain, he'd walked off the familiar and comfortable path inside his own head and heart and seen what festered in the dark. And one day Jean Guy Beauvoir would look at his own monsters, and then be able to recognize others. And maybe this was the day and this was the case. He hoped so. ~ Louise Penny

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 does not pay. Those reasonable metaphysics, those consoling ethics with which they would like to entice us only accentuate the disorder from which we suffer. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

No woman should be authorized to stay at home and raise her children. Society should be totally different. Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

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. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

I was very fond of Lagneau's phrase: I have no comfort but in my absolute despair. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

The day had been spent in the expectation of these hours, and now they were crumbling away, becoming, in their turn, another period of expectancy ... It was a journey without end, leading to an indefinite future, eternally shifting just as she was reaching the present. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

It is dreadful to think that behind me my own past is no longer anything but shifting darkness. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

To me it seems that too many young women of this time share the same creed. 'Live, laugh, love, be nothing but happy, experience everything, et cetera et cetera.' How monotonous, how useless this becomes. What about the honors of Joan of Arc, Beauvoir, Stowe, Xena, Princess Leia, or women that would truly fight for something other than just their own emotions? ~ Criss Jami

The moment anyone begins making calculations or comparisons, they cease to live for the moment: the present becomes a mere pointer to the future, and all sorts of questions tend to arise. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

In the old days the worst part of my depression used to be the astonishment it caused me, the scandalized way in which I fought against it. Nowadays, on the other hand, I accept it cheerfully enough, like an old familiar friend. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

The torment that so many young women know, bound hand and foot by love and motherhood, without having forgotten their former dreams. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

She was flighty and poor, a French studies major who quoted Simone de Beauvoir. She wiped her runny nose on her coat sleeve when it was snowing, stuck her head out of car windows the way dogs do, the wind fireworking her hair. That woman was gone now. Not that it was her fault. Vast fortunes did that to people. It took them to the cleaners, cruelly starched and steam-pressed them so all their raw edges, all the dirt and hunger and guileless laughter, were ironed out. Few survived real money. ~ Marisha Pessl

Whatever the country, capitalist or socialist, man was everywhere crushed by technology, made a stranger to his own work, imprisoned, forced into stupidity. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

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. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

The father's life is surrounded by mysterious prestige: the hours he spends in the home, the room where he works, the objects around him, his occupations, his habits, have a sacred character. It is he who feeds the family, is the one in charge and the head. Usually he works outside the home, and it is through him that the household communicates with the rest of the world: he is the embodiment of this adventurous, immense, difficult, and marvelous world; he is transcendence, he is God. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

I should like to be the landscape which I am contemplating, I should like this sky, this quiet water to think themselves within me, that it might be I whom they express in flesh and bone, and I remain at a distance. But it is also by this distance that the sky and the water exist before me. My contemplation is an excruciation only because it is also a joy. I can not appropriate the snow field where i slide. It remains foreign, forbidden, but I take delight in this very effort toward an impossible possession. I experience it as a triumph, not as a defeat. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

But it is impossible for anyone to say 'I am sacrificing myself' without feeling bitterness. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

Taking without being taken in the anguish of becoming prey is the dangerous game of adolescent feminine sexuality. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

They use the pretext of avoiding war, to make you swallow any kind of peace, said Paul. They use the pretext of a revolution to involve us in any kind of war, said Jardinet. ~ 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

To paint, to write, to engage in politics - these are not merely 'sublimations'; here we have aims that are willed for their own sakes. To deny it is to falsify all human history. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

They [Americans] want to believe that Good and Evil can be defined in precise categories, that Good is already, or will be easily achieved ... if this optimism appears too superficial, they will try to create a kind of anti-God: the U.S.S.R. That is Evil, and it only needs to be annihilated to re-establish the reign of Good. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

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

A woman alone always seems a little unusual; it is not true that men respect women: they respect each other through their women - wives, mistresses, "kept" women; when masculine protection no longer extends over her, woman is disarmed before a superior caste that is aggressive, sneering, or hostile. As an "erotic perversion, ~ Simone De Beauvoir

Fathers never have exactly the daughters they want because they invent a notion a them that the daughters have to conform to. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

Beauvoir knew that the root of all evil wasn't money. No, what created and drove evil was fear. Fear of not having enough money, enough food, enough land, enough power, enough security, enough love. Fear of not getting what you want, or losing what you have. ~ Louise Penny

Women- except in certain abstract gatherings such as conferences- do not use "we"; men say "women," and women adopt this word to refer to themselves; but they do not posit themselves authentically as Subjects . ~ Simone De Beauvoir

The world turned upside down,' Beauvoir continued. 'It was at once more beautiful and more frightening than you'd been led to believe. And suddenly you didn't know what to do. Who to trust. Where to turn. It's terrifying. Being lost is so much worse than being on the wrong road. That's why people stay on it for so long. ~ Louise Penny

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

But what does the word insist mean after a whole life of love and understanding? I have never asked anything for myself that I did not also wish for him. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

Tonight, once more, life sinks its teeth into my heart. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

I think with sadness of all the books I've read, all the places I've seen, all the knowledge I've amassed and that will be no more. All the music, all the paintings, all the culture, so many places: and suddenly nothing. They made no honey, those things, they can provide no one with any nourishment. At the most, if my books are still read, the reader will think: There wasn't much she didn't see! But that unique sum of things, the experience that I lived, with all its order and its randomness - the Opera of Peking, the arena of Huelva, the candomblé in Bahía, the dunes of El-Oued, Wabansia Avenue, the dawns in Provence, Tiryns, Castro talking to five hundred thousand Cubans, a sulphur sky over a sea of clouds, the purple holly, the white nights of Leningrad, the bells of the Liberation, an orange moon over the Piraeus, a red sun rising over the desert, Torcello, Rome, all the things I've talked about, others I have left unspoken - there is no place where it will all live again ~ Simone De Beauvoir

One thing is certain: When the time has come, nothing which is man made will subsist. One day, all human accomplishments will be reduced to a pile of ashes. But every single child to whom a woman has given birth will live forever, for he has been given an immortal soul made to God's image and likeness. In this light, the assertion of de Beauvoir that 'women produce nothing' becomes particularly ludicrous. ~ Alice Von Hildebrand

The role of a retired person is no longer to possess one. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

Ce n'est gue' re que dans les asiles que les coquettes gardent avec ente tement une foi entie' re en des regards absents; normalement, elles re clament des te moins. Women fond of dress are hardly ever entirely satisfied not to be seen, except among the insane; usually they want witnesses. ~ Simone De Beauvoir