Simone de Beauvoir Quotes - Page 4

Society turns away from the aged worker as though he belonged to another species. That is why the whole question is buried in a conspiracy of silence. Old age exposes the failure of our entire civilization.

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.

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

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.

it is true that nothing is gained without something being lost: everyone knows that in fulfilling oneself one necessarily sacrifices some possibilities.

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.

The most sympathetic of men never fully comprehend woman's concrete situation.

Marriage is a career which brings about more benefits than many others.

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

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

...counselling man to treat her as a slave while persuading her that she is a queen.

Justice can never be done in the midst of injustice.

Tonight, once more, life sinks its teeth into my heart.

Each person has his or her own very particular history and after all, the unconscious is the most secret part of ourselves.

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.

Each of us is responsible for everything and to every human being.

It was easier for me to think of a world without a creator than of a creator loaded with all the contradictions of the world.

I take on a shape and an existence only if I first throw myself into the world by loving, by doing.

It is in great part the anxiety of being a woman that devastates the feminine body.

In every society the artist or writer remains an outsider.

Capabilities are clearly manifested only when they have been realized.

I think that where you go wrong is that you imagine that your reasons for living ought to fall on you, ready-made from heaven, whereas we have to find them for ourselves.

We must not confuse the present with the past. With regard to the past, no further action is possible.

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.

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