697 Quotes by Simone de Beauvoir

The American woman’s inequality with men is proved by her defiant attitude.

I was no longer a vacant mind, an abstracted gaze, but the turbulent fragrance of the waving grain, the intimate smell of the heather moors, the dense heat of noon or the shiver of twilight; I was heavy; yet I was as vapour in the blue airs of summer and knew no bounds.

Woman has ovaries and a uterus; such are the particular conditions that lock her in her subjectivity; some even say she thinks with her hormones. Man vainly forgets that his anatomy also contains hormones and testicles. He grasps his body as a direct and normal link with the world that he believes he apprehends in all objectivity, whereas he considers woman’s body an obstacle, a prison, burdened by everything that particularizes it.

Women- except in certain abstract gatherings such as conferences- do not use “we”; men say “women,” and women adopt this word to refer to themselves; but they do not posit themselves authentically as Subjects .

I love you, with a touch of tragedy and quite madly.

One’s life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation and compassion.

Sometimes speech is no more than a device for saying nothing – and a neater one than silence.

I was too enamored of truth ever to mourn lost illusions.

Existence asserts itself as an absolute which must seek its justification within itself and not suppress itself. To attain this truth, man must not attempt to dispel the ambiguity of his being but, on the contrary, accept the task of realizing it.