697 Quotes by Simone de Beauvoir

The writer of originality, unless dead, is always shocking, scandalous; novelty disturbs and repels.

I've always been keenly aware of the passing of time. I've always thought that I was old. Even when I was twelve, I thought it was awful to be thirty. I felt that something was lost. At the same time, I was aware of what I could gain, and certain periods of my life have taught me a great deal. But, in spite of everything, I've always been haunted by the passing of time and by the fact that death keeps closing in on us.

The knight departing for new adventures offends his lady, yet she has nothing but contempt for him if he remains at her feet.

For me, the problem of time is linked up with that of death, with the thought that we inevitably draw closer and closer to it, with the horror of decay.

One can hardly tell women that washing up saucepans is their divine mission, [so] they are told that bringing up children is their divine mission. But the way things are in the world, bringing up children has a great deal in common with washing up saucepans.

Habit has a kind of poetry.

To will oneself moral and to will oneself free are one and the same decision.

Literature is born when something in life goes slightly adrift.

There is no justification for present existence other than its expansion into an indefinitely open future.