Quotes from Simone de Beauvoir

Ze had een hekel aan die anonieme hotelkamers waar zoveel mensen waren geweest zonder sporen achter te laten, waar zij zelf ook geen enkel spoor zou achterlaten. Alles blijft precies hetzelfde als ik er niet meer ben. Dat is wat doodgaan is, dacht ze.

To reject the notions of the eternal feminine, the black soul, or the Jewish character is not to deny that there are today Jews, blacks, or women: this denial is not a liberation for those concerned but an inauthentic flight.

Today I believe that, under the specially privileged conditions in which I exist, life contains two main truths which we must face simultaneously, and between which there is no choice - the joy of being, the horror of being no more.

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.

On the contrary, shared destitution makes the conjugal link reciprocal.

I had had a general sort of idea that the life I had behind me was a landscape in which I could wander as I pleased, gradually exploring its winding and its hidden valleys. No. I could repeat names and dates, just as a schoolboy can bring out a carefully learned lesson on a subject he knows nothing about. And at long intervals there arose worn, faded images, as abstract as those in my old French history: they stood out arbitrarily, against a white background.

The goal which my freedom aims at is conquering existence across the always inadequate density of being.

High as it may be, the number of victims is always measurable; and each one taken one by one is never anything but an individual: yet, through time and space, the triumph of the cause embraces the infinite, it interests the whole collectivity. In order to deny the outrage it is enough to deny the importance of the individual, even though it be at the cost of this collectivity: it is everything, he is only a zero.

One of the most remarkable features to be noted as we survey the scale of animal life is that as we go up, individuality is seen to be more and more fully developed. At the bottom, life is concerned only in the survival of the species as a whole; at the top, life seeks expression through particular individuals, while accomplishing also the survival of the group.

Love is then renunciation of all possession, of all confusion. One renounces being in order that there may be that being which one is not.

Oh, it was easy to be a soldier, it was much less easy to become a man again.

Görüyorsunuz ya, ne zaman Tanr?'y? aramaya kalksam, bir erkekle kar??la??yorum; hangi dine yöneleceÄŸimi ÅŸa??rd?m.

Time vanishes behind those who leave this world, and the older I get the more my past years draw together.

I know nothing, nothing. I not only have no answer to give, but I haven't even found a satisfactory way of propounding the questions.

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.

Categoria Celuilalt este în aceeaÅŸi m?sur? originar? ca ÅŸi conÅŸtiinÅ£a îns??i. In societ??ile cele mai primitive, în mitologiile cele mai vechi, se reg?seÅŸte întotdeauna o dualitate care este a AceluiaÅŸi ÅŸi a Celuilalt.

Ya había sentido eso antes, como esta noche, que su ser se disolvía en provecho de seres inaccesibles, pero nunca había visto con una lucidez tan perfecta su propio aniquilamiento.

He draws the motivations of his moral attitude from within the character which he has given himself and from within the universe which is its correlative.

One can not, without absurdity, indefinitely sacrifice each generation to the following one; human history would then be only an endless succession of negations which would never return to the positive.

The means, it is said, will be justified by the end; but it is the means which define it, and if it is contradicted at the moment that it is set up, the whole enterprise sinks into absurdity.

the absolute could be enclosed within the last moments of a dying person.

En mi juventud se me ha dicho tanto que estaba equivocada, tener razón me ha costado tanto, que rechazo equivocarme

Ils tenaient beaucoup à respecter les nuances de leurs rapports. Une amitié est un délicat édifice; elle s'accommode de certains partages mais elle réclame aussi des monopoles. Chacune des combinaisons que nous formions - à deux, à trois, à quatre - avait sa physionomie et ses agréments: il convenait de ne pas sacrifier cette diversité.

On n'a jamais fini d'apprendre parce qu'on n'a jamais fini d'ignorer.