SdSimone de Beauvoir

134 collected words

Simone de Beauvoir

Dates not recorded

Name supplied in the contributor-provided quotation collection. Basic attribution label; identity, lifetime and quotation authenticity have not been independently verified.

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Quotations and sayings

01Undated

In truth, to go for a walk with one's eyes open is enough to demonstrate that humanity is divided into two classes of individuals whose clothes, faces, bodies, smiles, gaits, interests, and occupations are manifestly different. Perhaps these differences are superficial, perhaps they are destined to disappear. What is certain is that right now they do most obviously exist.

Simone de Beauvoir / quote

02Undated

Scriassine studied me in turn. "You're not so dumb, you know. Generally I dislike intelligent women, maybe because they're not intelligent enough. They always want to prove to themselves, and to everyone else, how terribly smart they are. So all they do is talk and never understand anything. What struck me the first time I saw you was that way you have of keeping quiet.

Simone de Beauvoir / quote

03Undated

The feminine body is expected to be flesh, but discreetly so;

Simone de Beauvoir / quote

04Undated

If so few female geniuses are found in history, it is because society denies them any means of expression.

Simone de Beauvoir / quote

05Undated

The relation of woman to husband, of of daughter to father, of sister to brother, is a relation of vassalage.

Simone de Beauvoir / quote

06Undated

she gives birth in pain, she heals males' wounds, she nurses the newborn and buries the dead; of man she knows all that offends his pride and humiliates his will. While inclining before him and submitting flesh to spirit, she remains on the carnal borders of the spirit; and she contests the sharpness of hard masculine architecture by softening the angles; she introduces free luxury and unforeseen grace.

Simone de Beauvoir / quote

07Undated

; the man who does not "understand" a woman is happy to replace his subjective deficiency with an objective resistance; instead of admitting his ignorance, he recognizes the presence of a mystery exterior to himself: here is an excuse that flatters his laziness and vanity at the same time.

Simone de Beauvoir / quote

08Undated

The relation of woman to husband, of daughter to father, of sister to brother, is a relation of vassalage.

Simone de Beauvoir / quote

09Undated

Taking without being taken in the anguish of becoming prey is the dangerous game of adolescent feminine sexuality.

Simone de Beauvoir / quote

10Undated

The little girl feels that her body is escaping her, that it is no longer the clear expression of her individuality: it becomes foreign to her; and at the same moment she is grasped by others as a thing: on the street, eyes follow her, her body is subject to comments; she would like to become invisible; she is afraid of becoming flesh and afraid to show her flesh.

Simone de Beauvoir / quote

11Undated

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

Simone de Beauvoir / quote

12Undated

One understands now the drama that rends the adolescent girl at puberty: she cannot become “a grown-up” without accepting her femininity

Simone de Beauvoir / quote

13Undated

[Woman] is simply what man decrees; thus she is called "the sex," by which is meant that she appears essentially to the male as a sexual being. For him she is sex -- absolute sex, no less. She is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her; she is incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. He is the Subject, he is the Absolute -- she is the Other.

Simone de Beauvoir / quote

14Undated

Girls are weighed down by restrictions, boys with demands - two equally harmful disciplines.

Simone de Beauvoir / quote

15Undated

We will not let ourselves be intimidated by the number and violence of attacks against women; nor be fooled by the self-serving praise showered on the “real woman”; nor be won over by men’s enthusiasm for her destiny, a destiny they would not for the world want to share.

Simone de Beauvoir / quote

16Undated

A woman's situation, i.e those meanings derived from the total context in which she comes to maturity, disposes her to apprehend her body not as instrument of her transcendence, but "an object destined for another.

Simone de Beauvoir / quote

17Undated

Ethics is the triumph of freedom over facticity.

Simone de Beauvoir / quote

18Undated

In oppressing, one becomes oppressed. Men are enchained by reason of their very sovereignty; it is because they alone earn money that their wives demand checks, it is because they alone engage in a business or profession that their wives require them to be successful, it is because they alone embody transcendence that their wives wish to rob them of it by taking charge...

Simone de Beauvoir / quote

19Undated

I was convinced that I would be, that I was already, one in a million.

Simone de Beauvoir / quote

20Undated

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.

Simone de Beauvoir / quote

21Undated

The present is a transitory existence which is made in order to be abolished: it retrieves itself only by transcending itself toward the permanence of future being; it is only as an instrument, as a means, it is only by it's efficacy with regard to the coming of the future that the present is validly realized: reduced to itself it is nothing , one may dispose of it as he pleases.

Simone de Beauvoir / quote

22Undated

In the old days the worst part of my depression used to be the astonishment it caused me, the scandalized way in which I fought against it. Nowadays, on the other hand, I accept it cheerfully enough, like an old familiar friend.

Simone de Beauvoir / quote

23Undated

The fear of death never left me; I couldn't get used to the thought; I would still sometimes shake and weep with terror. By contrast, the fact of existence here and now sometimes took on a glorious splendour.

Simone de Beauvoir / quote

24Undated

To emancipate woman is to refuse to confine her to the relations she bears to man, not to deny them to her; let her have her independent existence and she will continue nonetheless to exist for him also: mutually recognising each other as subject, each will yet remain for the other an other. The reciprocity of their relations will not do away with the miracles – desire, possession, love, dream, adventure – worked by the division of human beings into two separate categories; and the words that move us – giving, conquering, uniting – will not lose their meaning. On the contrary, when we abolish the slavery of half of humanity, together with the whole system of hypocrisy that it implies, then the 'division' of humanity will reveal its genuine significance and the human couple will find its true form.

Simone de Beauvoir / quote