Simone de Beauvoir quotes

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. (Simone de Beauvoir)
I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth - and truth rewarded me. View quote
Simone de Beauvoir
If you live long enough, you'll see every victory turn into a defeat. View quote
Simone de Beauvoir
The most mediocre of males feels himself a demigod as compared with women. View quote
Simone de Beauvoir
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. View quote
Simone de Beauvoir
Change your life today. Don't gamble on the future, act now, without delay. View quote
Simone de Beauvoir
No one is more arrogant toward women, more aggressive or scornful, than the man who is anxious about his virility. View quote
Simone de Beauvoir
All oppression creates a state of war. View quote
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. View quote
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. View quote
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)
One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. View quote
Simone de Beauvoir
To catch a husband is an art; to hold him is a job. View quote
Simone de Beauvoir
I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom. View quote
Simone de Beauvoir
What is an adult? A child blown up by age. View quote
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. View quote
Simone de Beauvoir
This has always been a man's world, and none of the reasons that have been offered in explanation have seemed adequate. View quote
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. View quote
Simone de Beauvoir
The writer of originality, unless dead, is always shocking, scandalous; novelty disturbs and repels. View quote
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. View quote
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)
When I was a child, when I was an adolescent, books saved me from despair: that convinced me that culture was the highest of values[...]. View quote
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. View quote
Simone de Beauvoir
Life is occupied in both perpetuating itself and in surpassing itself; if all it does is maintain itself, then living is only not dying. View quote
Simone de Beauvoir
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. View quote
Simone de Beauvoir