Simone de Beauvoir quotes:

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

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

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.

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.

Few tasks are more like the torture of Sisyphus than housework, with its endless repetition: the clean becomes soiled, the soiled is made clean, over and over, day after day.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

Buying is a profound pleasure.

I would stand transfixed before the windows of the confectioners' shops, fascinated by the luminous sparkle of candied fruits, the cloudy lustre of jellies, the kaleidoscope inflorescence of acidulated fruit drops - red, green, orange, violet: I coveted the colours themselves as much as the pleasure they promised me.

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.

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

As long as there have been men and they have lived, they have all felt this tragic ambiguity of their condition, but as long as there have been philosophers and they have thought, most of them have tried to mask it.

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

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

One can not start by saying our earthly destiny has or has not importance, for it depends on us to give it importance.

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

Every war, every revolution, demands the sacrifice of a generation, of a collectivity, by those who undertake it.

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.

Literature is born when something in life goes slightly adrift.

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.

Jealousy is not contemptible, real love has a beak and claws.

Woman is shut up in a kitchen or in a boudoir, and astonishment is expressed that her horizon is limited. Her wings are clipped, and it is found deplorable that she cannot fly.

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

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.

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.

My life was hurrying, racing tragically toward its end. And yet at the same time it was dripping so slowly, so very slowly now, hour by hour, minute by minute. One always has to wait until the sugar melts, the memory dies, the wound scars over, the sun sets, the unhappiness lifts and fades away.

No existence can be validly fulfilled if it is limited to itself.

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.

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.

La femme?sait que quand on la regarde on ne la distingue pas de son apparence: elle est juge e, respecte e, de sire e a' travers sa toilette. Woman?knows that when she is looked at she is not considered apart from her appearance: she is judged, respected, desired, by and through her toilette.

On ne na|"t pas femme: on le devient. One is not born a woman: one becomes a woman.

She would never change, but one day at the touch of a fingertip she would fall to dust.

When Goya was 80 he drew an ancient man propped on two sticks, with a great mass of white hair and beard all over his face, and the inscription, "I am still learning."

The way I approached a question, my habit of mind, the way I looked at things, what I took for granted - all this was myself and it did not seem to me that I could alter it.

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

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

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

That's what I consider true generosity: You give your all, and yet you always feel as if it costs you nothing.

The fact that we are human beings is infinitely more important than all the peculiarities that distinguish human beings from one another.

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.

Eating, sleeping, cleaning - the years no longer rise up toward heaven, they lie spread out ahead, gray and identical. The battle against dust and dirt is never won. Washing, ironing, sweeping, ferreting out rolls of lint from under wardrobes - all this halting of decay is also the denial of life; for time simultaneously creates and destroys, and only its negative aspect concerns the housekeeper.

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

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

Art is an attempt to integrate evil.

I realized that even if we went on talking till Judgment Day, I would still find the time all too short.

There is no justification for present existence other than its expansion into an indefinitely open future.

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

A couple who go on living together merely because that was how they began, without any other reason: was that what we were turning into?

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.

She offered her mouth to him, as if enchanted. A Persian princess, a little Indian, a fox, a morning glory, a lovely wisteria--it always pleased them when you told them they looked like something, like something else.

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.

Americans are nature-lovers: but they only admit of nature proofed and corrected by man.

The knight departing for new adventures offends his lady, yet she has nothing but contempt for him if he remains at her feet.

There is something in the New York air that makes sleep useless.

from one minute to the next the present is merely an honorary past. It must be filled unceasingly anew to dissemble the curse it carries within itself; that is why Americans like speed, alcohol, thriller films and any sensational news: the demand for new things, and ever newer things, is feverish since nowhere will they rest.

You have never had any confidence in him. And if he has no confidence in himself it is because he sees himself through your eyes.

Therefore the misfortune which comes to man as a result of the fact that he was a child is that his freedom was first concealed from him and that all his life he will be nostalgic for the time when he did not know it's exigencies.

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

All oppression creates a state of war.

Old age is life's parody.

There is only one solution if old age is not to be an absurd parody of our former life, and that is to go on pursuing ends that give our existence a meaning.

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

A writer is hoisted up onto a pedestal only to scrutinize him more closely and conclude that it was a mistake to put him up there in the first place.

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

It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our lives that we must draw our strength to live and our reasons for living.

She was ready to deny the existence of space and time rather than admit that love might not be eternal.

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

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

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

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 no to the sex that brings forth but to that which kills.

The misfortune is that although everyone must come to [death], each experiences the adventure in solitude. We never left Maman during those last days... and yet we were profoundly separated from her.

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.

Ethics is the triumph of freedom over facticity.

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

Two separate beings, in different circumstances, face to face in freedom and seeking justification of their existence through one another, will always live an adventure full of risk and promise." (p. 248)

Being on the fringes of the world is not the best place for someone who intends to re-create it: here again, to go beyond the given, one must be deeply rooted in it. Personal accomplishments are almost impossible in human categories collectively kept in an inferior situation.

Capabilities are clearly manifested only when they have been realized.

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

Even if one is neither vain nor self-obsessed, it is so extraordinary to be oneself - exactly oneself and no one else - and so unique, that it seems natural that one should also be unique for someone else.

There is not a single line in this diary that does not call for a correction or a denial...Yes: throughout these pages I meant what I was writing and I meant the opposite; reading them again I feel completely lost...I was lying to myself. How I lied to myself!

What would Prince Charming have for occupation if he had not to awaken the Sleeping beauty?

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

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.

The day knowledge was preferred to wisdom and mere usefulness to beauty. . . . Only a moral revolution -- not a social or a political revolution -- only a moral revolution would lead man back to his lost truth.

We always come back to the same vicious circle - an extreme degree of material or intellectual poverty does away with the means of alleviating it.

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.

It must be said in addition that the men with the most scrupulous respect for embryonic life are also those who are most zealous when it comes to condemning adults to death in war.

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

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.

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

One is not born a woman, but becomes one.

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

"but all day long I would be training myself to think, to understand, to criticize, to know myself; I was seeking for the absolute truth: this preoccupation did not exactly encourage polite conversation.

"?A day in which I don't write leaves a taste of ashes.

... to adapt one's outlook to another person's salvation is the surest and quickest way of losing him.

... words have to murder reality before they can hold it captive ...

A Darwinian nation of economic fitness abhors idleness, dependence, non-productivity.

A foreign country can best be understood through its literature.

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.

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.

A man attaches himself to woman -- not to enjoy her, but to enjoy himself.

A man is in the right in being a man; it is the woman who is in the wrong.

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

Ah, if only there were two of me, she thought, one who spoke and the other who listened, one who lived and one who watched, how I would love myself! I would envy no one.

all success cloaks a surrender

All the opportunities you let slip by! The idea, the inspiration just doesn´t come fast enough. Instead of being open, you´re closed up tight. That´s the worst sin of all - the sin of omission.

And without a doubt it is more comfortable to endure blind bondage than to work for one's liberation; the dead, too, are better suited to the earth than the living.

Anger or revolt that does not get into the muscles remains a figment of the imagination.

Anyway I know only too well that all life is nothing but a brief reprieve from death.

As long as the family and the myth of the family ... have not been destroyed, women will still be oppressed.

Authentic love must be founded on reciprocal recognition of two freedoms. For each of them, love would be the revelation of the self through the gift of the self and the enrichment of the universe.

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

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