697 Quotes by Simone de Beauvoir

Place Saint-Sulpice, la main dans la main de ma tante Marguerite qui ne savait pas très bien me parler, je me suis demandé soudain: "Comment me voit-elle?" et j'éprouvai un sentiment aigu de supériorité : car je connaissais mon for intérieur, et elle l'ignorait; trompée par les apparences, elle ne doutait pas, voyant mon corps inachevé, qu'au-dedans de moi rien ne manquait; je me promis, lorsque je serais grande, de ne pas oublier qu'on est à cinq ans un individu complet.

When you stubbornly give one man a chance, you arbitrarily deny it to another one.

It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our lives that we must draw our strength to live and our reasons for living.

It was not murder that fulfilled Sade's erotic nature; it was literature.

Gozar de las cosas bellas le basta; acepta el lujo y la vida fácil, le gusta la felicidad. Yo necesito una vida devoradora. Necesito obrar, gastarme, realizarme, necesito un fin que alcanzar, dificultades que vencer, una obra que cumplir. No estoy hecha para el lujo. Nunca podrá satisfacerme lo que le satisface.

[From a New York Times biography from May 27, 2010 entitled Introduction to Simone de Beauvoir's 'The Second Sex']Beauvoir herself was as devout an atheist as she had once been a Catholic, and she dismisses religions — even when they worship a goddess — as the inventions of men to perpetuate their dominion.

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

Suddenly I was struck motionless: I was living through the first chapter of a novel in which I was the heroine; she was still almost a child, but we, too, were growing up.

«No se muere de haber nacido, ni de haber vivido, ni de vejez. Se muere de "algo"».