01UndatedAs long as there have been men and they have lived, they have all felt this tragic ambiguity of their condition, but as long as there have been philosophers and they have thought, most of them have tried to mask it.Simone de Beauvoir / quote ↗
02UndatedAll she had to do was make the simplest of gestures - open her hands and let go her hold. She lifted one hand and moved the fingers of it; they responded, in surprise and obedience, and this obedience of a thousand little unsuspected muscles was in itself a miracle. Why ask for more?Simone de Beauvoir / quote ↗
03UndatedThe day had been spent in the expectation of these hours, and now they were crumbling away, becoming, in their turn, another period of expectancy...It was a journey without end, leading to an indefinite future, eternally shifting just as she was reaching the present.Simone de Beauvoir / quote ↗
04UndatedI should like to be the landscape which I am contemplating, I should like this sky, this quiet water to think themselves within me, that it might be I whom they express in flesh and bone, and I remain at a distance. But it is also by this distance that the sky and the water exist before me. My contemplation is an excruciation only because it is also a joy. I can not appropriate the snow field where i slide. It remains foreign, forbidden, but I take delight in this very effort toward an impossible possession. I experience it as a triumph, not as a defeat.Simone de Beauvoir / quote ↗
05UndatedHave you ever felt in your inmost being, the conscience of others?' again she was trembling, the words were not releasing her. 'It's intolerable you knowSimone de Beauvoir / quote ↗
06UndatedGod! when you think of all the things you could do and yet somehow never do! All the opportunities you let slip by! The idea, the inspiration just doesn't come fast enough. Instead of being open, you're closed up tight. Thats's the worst sin of all - the sin of omission.Simone de Beauvoir / quote ↗
07UndatedA normal existence - what could be more irrational? It's fantastic the number of things you're forced not to think about in order to go from one end of the day to the other without jumping the track! And the number of memories that have to be driven from your mind, and truths that have to be evaded! "That's why I'm afraid to leave,' I said to myself. In Paris, near Robert, I manage without too much difficulty to avoid the traps; I carefully mark them, and there are alarm bells to warn me of dangers. But alone, under an unknown sky, what would happen to me? What truths would come suddenly to blind me? What chasms would open before me? Oh yes, chasms close, truths fade out - that is sure and certain; I've seen it happen often enough before. We're like those earthworms one vainly cuts in two, or those lobsters whose legs grow back again. But the moment of false agony, the moment you'd rather die than mend yourself once again - when I think of it, I lose heart. I try to reason with myself: 'Why should anything happen to me? But why shouldn't anything happen to me?' It's never safe to go off the beaten path. It's true, I feel a little stifled here, but you get used to being stifled. And a habit is never bad, despite what they say.Simone de Beauvoir / quote ↗
08Undated(About Sartre...)His death does not separate us. My death will not bring us together again. That is how things are. It is in itself splendid that we were able to live our lives in harmony for so long.Simone de Beauvoir / quote ↗
09UndatedThe thing that attracted me about philosophy was that it went straight to essentials. I had never liked fiddling detail; I perceived the general significance of things rather than their singularities, and I preferred understanding to seeing; I had always wanted to know everything; philosophy would allow me to appease this desire, for it aimed at total reality;philosophy went right to the heart of truth and revealed to me, instead of an illusory whirlwind of facts or empirical laws, an order, a reason, a necessity in everything.Simone de Beauvoir / quote ↗
10UndatedI hadn't known Chancel very well, but ten days earlier I had seen him laughing with the others around the Christmas tree. Maybe Robert was right; the distance between the living and the dead really isn't very great. And yet, like myself, those future corpses who were drinking their coffee in silence appeared ashamed to be so alive.Simone de Beauvoir / quote ↗
11UndatedThere is something in the New York air that makes sleep useless.Simone de Beauvoir / quote ↗
12UndatedLife is occupied in both perpetuating itself & in surpassing itself; if all it does is maintain itself, then living is only not dying, & human existence is indistinguishable from an absurd vegetation; a life justifies itself only if its effort to perpetuate itself is integrated into its surpassing & if this surpassing has no other limits than those which the subject assigns himself.Simone de Beauvoir / quote ↗
14UndatedIn the face of an obstacle which is impossible to overcome stubbornness is stupid.Simone de Beauvoir / quote ↗
16UndatedDefending the truth is not something one does out of a sense of duty or to allay guilt complexes but is a reward in itself.Simone de Beauvoir / quote ↗
17UndatedThose interested in perpetuating present conditions are always in tears about the marvelous past that is about to disappear without having so much as a smile for the young future.Simone de Beauvoir / quote ↗
18UndatedOne's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others by means of love friendship indignation and compassion.Simone de Beauvoir / quote ↗
19UndatedYou can't assume the responsibility for everything you do-or don't do.Simone de Beauvoir / quote ↗
20UndatedThe fact that we are human beings is infinitely more important than all the peculiarities that distinguish human beings from one another.Simone de Beauvoir / quote ↗
23UndatedIf you haven't been happy very young you can still be happy later on but it's much harder. You need more luck.Simone de Beauvoir / quote ↗
