Simone de Beauvoir Quotes

216 Sourced Quotes

The man of today did not establish this patriarchal regime, but he profits by it, even when he criticizes it. And he has made it very much a part of his own thinking.

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

Simone de Beauvoir
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?

Simone de Beauvoir
Words have to murder reality before they can hold it captive.

Simone de Beauvoir
The individuals who seem to us most outstanding, who are honored with the name of genius, are those who have proposed to enact the fate of all humanity in their personal existences.

Simone de Beauvoir
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.

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

Simone de Beauvoir
Literature takes its revenge on reality by making it the slave of fiction.

Simone de Beauvoir
They were walking side by side, but each was alone.

Simone de Beauvoir
If one lives long enough, one sees that every victory sooner or later turns to defeat.

Simone de Beauvoir
Some things I loved have vanished. A great many others have been given to me.

Simone de Beauvoir
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.

Simone de Beauvoir
Tragedies are all right for a while: you are concerned, you are curious, you feel good. And then it gets repetitive, it doesn't advance, it grows dreadfully boring: it is so very boring, even for me.

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
To lose confidence in one's body is to lose confidence in oneself.

Simone de Beauvoir
In the face of an obstacle which it is impossible to overcome, stubbornness is stupid.

Simone de Beauvoir
Writing... is a profession that can only be learned by writing.

Simone de Beauvoir
What did today's sacrifices matter: the Universe lay ahead in the future. What did burnings at the stake and massacres matter? The Universe was somewhere else, always somewhere else! And it isn't anywhere: there are only men, men eternally divided.

Simone de Beauvoir
I'm not against mothers. I am against the ideology which expects every woman to have children, and I'm against the circumstances under which mothers have to have their children.

Simone de Beauvoir
I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth — and truth rewarded me.

Simone de Beauvoir
Youth and what the Italians so prettily call stamina. The vigor, the fire, that enables you to love and create. When you've lost that, you've lost everything.

Simone de Beauvoir
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.

Simone de Beauvoir
What has value in their eyes is never what is done for them; it's what they do for themselves.

Simone de Beauvoir
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.

Simone de Beauvoir
There has been one undoubted success in my life, my relationship with Sartre. In more than thirty years we have only once gone to sleep at night disunited.

Simone de Beauvoir
She was not to look beyond herself for the meaning of her life.

Simone de Beauvoir
Man is a talking animal and he will always let himself be swayed by the power of the word.

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

Simone de Beauvoir
For the first time in my life, I took part in a real battle between men. The dead did not come to life again, the vanquished fled in disorder; every thrust of my lance helped save Carmona. That day, I would have died with a smile on my lips, certain of having contributed to a triumphant future for my city.

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

Simone de Beauvoir