I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom.
de Beauvoir, Simone. The Blood of Others. 1946.
Time is beginning to flow again.
de Beauvoir, Simone. All Men are Mortal. 1946.
If I had amnesia, I'd be almost like other men. Perhaps I'd even be able to love you.
de Beauvoir, Simone. All Men are Mortal. 1946.
I'm never afraid. But in my case it's nothing to be proud of.
de Beauvoir, Simone. All Men are Mortal. 1946.
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.
de Beauvoir, Simone. All Men are Mortal. 1946.
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."
de Beauvoir, Simone. All Men are Mortal. 1946.
Dare to believe me. Dare!
de Beauvoir, Simone. All Men are Mortal. 1946.
You're unique like all other women.
de Beauvoir, Simone. All Men are Mortal. 1946.
They were walking side by side, but each was alone.
de Beauvoir, Simone. All Men are Mortal. 1946.
There is only one good. And that is to act according to the dictates of one's conscience.
de Beauvoir, Simone. All Men are Mortal. 1946.
It was as though some stubborn god spent their time in an immutable and absurd balancing act between life and death, prosperity and poverty.
de Beauvoir, Simone. All Men are Mortal. 1946.
What has value in their eyes is never what is done for them; it's what they do for themselves.
de Beauvoir, Simone. All Men are Mortal. 1946.
It is impossible to do anything for anyone.
de Beauvoir, Simone. All Men are Mortal. 1946.
That's what I consider true generosity. You give your all, and yet you always feel as if it costs you nothing.
de Beauvoir, Simone. All Men are Mortal. 1946.
If you live long enough, you'll see that every victory turns into a defeat.
de Beauvoir, Simone. All Men are Mortal. 1946.
Try to stay a man amongst men ... There's no other hope for you.
de Beauvoir, Simone. All Men are Mortal. 1946.
One is not born a genius, one becomes a genius; and the feminine situation has up to the present rendered this becoming practically impossible.
de Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. 1949.
One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.
de Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. 1949.
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.
de Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. 1949.
To "catch" a husband is an art; to "hold" him is a job.
de Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. 1949.
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.
de Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. 1949.
All oppression creates a state of war. And this is no exception. The existent who is regarded as inessential cannot fail to demand the re-establishment of her sovereignty.
de Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. 1949.
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.
de Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. 1949.
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.
de Beauvoir, Simone. The Coming of Age. 1970.
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.
de Beauvoir, Simone. The Coming of Age. 1970.
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.
de Beauvoir, Simone. The Coming of Age. 1970.
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.
de Beauvoir, Simone. The Coming of Age. 1970.
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.
de Beauvoir, Simone. The Coming of Age. 1970.
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.
de Beauvoir, Simone. The Ethics of Ambiguity. 1947.
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. There was Stalingrad and there was Buchenwald, and neither of the two wipes out the other. Since we do not succeed in fleeing it, let us therefore try to look the truth in the face. Let us try to assume our fundamental ambiguity. It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our life that we must draw our strength to live and our reason for acting.
de Beauvoir, Simone. The Ethics of Ambiguity. 1947.
Source: European Graduate School (EGS)
