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

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Engraved portrait of Simone de Beauvoir, facing right

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

English
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About Simone de Beauvoir

Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir (9 January 1908 – 14 April 1986) was a French author and existentialist philosopher. She is now most famous for her 1949 treatise The Second Sex [Le Deuxième Sexe], a detailed analysis of women's oppression and a foundational tract of contemporary feminism, and her long personal relationship with Jean-Paul Sartre.

Biography information from Wikiquote · Portrait adapted from Wikimedia Commons, Moshe Milner (CC BY-SA)

Also Known As

Pen Names: Le Castor
Alternative Names: Simone-Lucie-Ernestine-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir Castor

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Additional quotes by Simone de Beauvoir

There is not a single line in this diary that does not call for a correction or a denial...Yes: throughout these pages I meant what I was writing and I meant the opposite; reading them again I feel completely lost...I was lying to myself. How I lied to myself!

woman is an eminently poetic reality since man projects onto her everything he is not resolved to be.

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.

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