Change your life today. Don't gamble on the future, act now, without delay.
– Simone de Beauvoir
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.
– Simone de Beauvoir
I am incapable of conceiving infinity, and yet I do not accept finity.
– Simone de Beauvoir
I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom.
– Simone de Beauvoir
If you live long enough, you'll see that every victory turns into a defeat.
– Simone de Beauvoir
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.
– Simone de Beauvoir
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.
– Simone de Beauvoir
It's frightening to think that you mark your children merely by being yourself. It seems unfair. You can't assume the responsibility for everything you do -or don't do.
– Simone de Beauvoir
One is not born a genius, one becomes a genius.
– Simone de Beauvoir
One is not born a woman, but becomes one.
– Simone de Beauvoir
One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation and compassion.
– Simone de Beauvoir
Retirement may be looked upon either as a prolonged holiday or as a rejection, a being thrown on to the scrap-heap.
– Simone de Beauvoir
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.
– Simone de Beauvoir
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.
– Simone de Beauvoir
Society cares for the individual only so far as he is profitable.
– Simone de Beauvoir
That a whole part of the middle class detests me... is utterly normal. I would be troubled if the contrary were true.
– Simone de Beauvoir
The most mediocre of males feels himself a demigod as compared with women.
– Simone de Beauvoir
These worthy schoolteachers were not overburdened with diplomas, but as far as devotion and morality were concerned, they were second to none; they wore plum-colored silk blouses that caressed my cheeks when they pressed me to their bosoms.
– Simone de Beauvoir
To catch a husband is an art; to hold him is a job.
– Simone de Beauvoir
To make oneself an object, to make oneself passive, is a very different thing from being a passive object.
– Simone de Beauvoir
What is an adult? A child blown up by age.
– Simone de Beauvoir
When an individual is kept in a situation of inferiority, the fact is that he does become inferior.
– Simone de Beauvoir
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.
– Simone de Beauvoir
I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for the truth; and truth rewarded me.
– Simone de Beauvoir
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.
– Simone de Beauvoir
That's what I consider true generosity. You give your all, and yet you always feel as if it costs you nothing.
– Simone de Beauvoir
Society, being codified by man, decrees that woman is inferior she can do away with this inferiority only by destroying the male's superiority.
– Simone de Beauvoir
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.
– Simone de Beauvoir
No one is more arrogant toward women, more aggressive or scornful, than the man who is anxious about his virility.
– Simone de Beauvoir
Art is an attempt to integrate evil.
– Simone de Beauvoir
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.