Simone de Beauvoir Quotes

Time is beginning to flow again.

The present enshrines the past—and in the past all history has been made by men.

"Art, literature, and philosophy are attempts to found the world anew on a human freedom: that of the creator; to foster such an aim, one must first unequivocally posit oneself as a freedom. The restrictions that education and custom impose on a woman limit her grasp of the universe...Indeed, for one to become a creator, it is not enough to be cultivated, that is, to make going to shows and meeting people part of one's life; culture must be apprehended through the free movement of a transcendence; the spirit with all its riches must project itself in an empty sky that is its to fill; but if a thousand fine bonds tie it to the earth, its surge is broken. The girl today can certainly go out alone, stroll in the Tuileries; but I have already said how hostile the street is: eyes everywhere, hands waiting: if she wanders absentmindedly, her thoughts elsewhere, if she lights a cigarette in a cafe, if she goes to the cinema alone, an unpleasant incident can quickly occur; she must inspire respect by the way she dresses and behaves: this concern rivets her to the ground and self. "Her wings are clipped." At eighteen, T.E. Lawrence went on a grand tour through France by bicycle; a young girl would never be permitted to take on such an adventure...Yet such experiences have an inestimable impact: this is how an individual in the headiness of freedom and discovery learns to look at the entire world as his fief...[The girl] may feel alone within the world: she never stands up in front of it, unique and sovereign."

...counselling man to treat her as a slave while persuading her that she is a queen.

The body is not a thing, it is a situation: it is our grasp on the world and our sketch of our project

To paint, to write, to engage in politics — these are not merely ‘sublimations’; here we have aims that are willed for their own sakes. To deny it is to falsify all human history.

Faith allows an evasion of those difficulties which the atheist confronts honestly. And to crown all, the believer derives a sense of great superiority from this very cowardice itself.

To lose confidence in one's body is to lose confidence in oneself.

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

Has my watch stopped? No. But its hands do not seem to be going around. Don't look at them. Think of something else - anything else: think of yesterday, a calm, ordinary, easy-flowing day, in spite of the nervous tension of waiting.

That's what I consider true generosity: You give your all, and yet you always feel as if it costs you nothing.

All oppression creates a state of war. And this is no exception.

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.

The fact that we are human beings is infinitely more important than all the peculiarities that distinguish human beings from one another; it is never the given that confers superiorities: ‘virtue’, as the ancients called it, is defined on the level of ‘that which depends on us’.

The fact that we are human beings is infinitely more important than all the peculiarities that distinguish human beings from one another; it is never the given that confers superiorities: "virtue", as the ancients called it, is defined at the level of "that which depends on us". In both sexes is played out the same drama of the flesh and the spirit, of finitude and transcendence; both are gnawed away by time and laid in wait for by death, they have the same essential need for one another; and they can gain from their liberty the same glory. If they were to taste it, they would no longer be tempted to dispute fallacious privileges, and fraternity between them could then come into existence.