Simone de Beauvoir - The Second Sex (1949)

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One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.

Simone de Beauvoir
There is a poetry in making preserves; the housewife has caught duration in the snare of sugar, she has enclosed life in jars.

Simone de Beauvoir
Weakness' is weakness only in light of the aims man sets for himself, the instruments at his disposal and the laws he imposes.

Simone de Beauvoir
Few tasks are more like the torture of Sisyphus than housework, with its endless repetition…The housewife wears herself out marking time: she makes nothing, simply perpetuates the present.

Simone de Beauvoir
The ideal of happiness has always taken material form in the house, whether cottage or castle; it stands for permanence and separation from the world.

Simone de Beauvoir
Dwelling-place and food are useful for life but give it no significance: the immediate goals of the housekeeper are only means, not true ends.

Simone de Beauvoir
Personal accomplishment is almost impossible in the human categories that are maintained collectively in an inferior situation.

Simone de Beauvoir
The products of domestic work, then, must necessarily be consumed; a continual renunciation is required of the woman whose operations are completed only in their destruction.

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

Simone de Beauvoir
It is doubtless impossible to approach any human problems with a mind free from bias.

Simone de Beauvoir
On the day when it will be possible for woman to love not in her weakness but in her strength, not to escape herself but to find herself, not to abase herself but to assert herself—on that day love will become for her, as for man, a source of life and not of mortal danger.

Simone de Beauvoir
All agree in recognising the fact that females exist in the human species; today as always they make up about one half of humanity. And yet we are told that femininity is in danger; we are exhorted to be women, remain women, become women. It would appear, then, that every female human being is not necessarily a woman; to be so considered she must share in that mysterious and threatened reality known as femininity.

Simone de Beauvoir
Capabilities are clearly manifested only when they have been realized.

Simone de Beauvoir