Quotes from Simone de Beauvoir

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

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)

Whether you think of it as heavenly or as earthly, if you love life immortality is no consolation for death.

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

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

If I were proud of anything in my life, it would be of our love. I feel we have to tell to each other as many things as we can, so we are not only lovers, but the closest of friends at the same time.

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

Art is an attempt to integrate evil.

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.

We belong to this earth. Now I can see the truth ... I love you on this earth of ours. Love me, do!

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

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.

When someone you love dies you pay for the sin of outliving her with a thousand piercing regrets.

It's not a very big step from contentment to complacency.

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

You can't assume the responsibility for everything you do-or don't do.

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

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

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.

Many things would be changed for Americans if they would only admit that there is ill-luck in this world and that misfortune is not a priori a crime.

Living by proxy is always a precarious expedient.

Let women be provided with living strength of their own.

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

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