Simone de Beauvoir - Death Quotes

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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
In horror, in terror, she accepted the metamorphosis — gnat, foam, ant, until death. And it's only the beginning, she thought. She stood motionless, as if it were possible to play tricks with time, possible to stop it from following its course. But her hands stiffened against her quivering lips.
When the bells began to sound the hour she let out the first scream.

Simone de Beauvoir
It was as though some stubborn god spent their time in an immutable and absurd balancing act between life and death, prosperity and poverty.

Simone de Beauvoir
Anyway I know only too well that all life is nothing but a brief reprieve from death.

Simone de Beauvoir
One had to listen very intently to catch the words that she laboured to breathe out; words whose mystery made them as disturbing as those of an oracle. Her memories, her desires, her anxieties were floating somewhere outside time, turned into unreal and poignant dreams by her childlike voice and the imminence of death.

Simone de Beauvoir
Religion could do no more for my mother than the hope of posthumous success could do for me. Whether you think of it as heavenly or as earthly, if you love life immortality is no consolation for death.

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

Simone de Beauvoir
A conquest of this kind is never finished; the contingency remains, and, so that he may assert his will, man is even obliged to stir up in the world the outrage he does not want. But this element of failure is a very condition of his life; one can never dream of eliminating it without immediately dreaming of death. This does not mean that one should consent to failure, but rather one must consent to struggle against it without respite.

Simone de Beauvoir
And indeed, 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.

Simone de Beauvoir
There is no such thing as a natural death: nothing that happens to a man is ever natural, since his presence calls the world into question. All men must die: but for every man his death is an accident and, even if he knows it and consents to it, an unjustifiable violation.

Simone de Beauvoir
Sign of old age: distress at all leave-takings, all separations. And the sadness of memories, because I'm aware they're condemned to death.

Simone de Beauvoir
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.

Simone de Beauvoir
The earthly meaning of eternal life was death, and she refused to die.

Simone de Beauvoir