Simone de Beauvoir
Simone de Beauvoir
Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir; 9 January 1908 – 14 April 1986) was a French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist and social theorist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, she had a significant influence on both feminist existentialism and feminist theory...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth9 January 1908
CountryFrance
luck would-be world
Many things would be changed for Americans if they would only admit that there is ill-luck in this world and that misfortune is not a priori a crime.
revenge reality literature
Literature takes its revenge on reality by making it the slave of fiction ...
country literature understood
A foreign country can best be understood through its literature.
immortality terrible curse
immortality is a terrible curse.
sugar duration jars
there is a poetry in making preserves; the housewife has caught duration in the snare of sugar, she has enclosed life in jars.
women history historical
it is not the inferiority of women that has caused their historical insignificance; it is rather their historical insignificance that has doomed them to inferiority.
mistake firsts pedestal
A writer is hoisted up onto a pedestal only to scrutinize him more closely and conclude that it was a mistake to put him up there in the first place.
time years moments
For years I thought my work still lay ahead, and now I find it is behind me: there was no moment when it took place.
silence speech saying-nothing
Sometimes speech is no more than a device for saying nothing - and a neater one than silence.
retirement loss solitude
Retirement revives the sorrow of parting, the feeling of abandonment, solitude and uselessness that is caused by the loss of some beloved person.
communication emotional self
The state of emotional intoxication allows one to grasp existence in one's self and in the other, as both subjectivity and passivity. The two partners merge in this ambiguous unity; each one is freed of his own presence and achieves immediate communication with the other.
running doe problem
Why does one exist? That's not my problem. One does exist. The thing to do is to take no notice but go at it on the run and to keep on going right on until you die.
time decay horror
For me, the problem of time is linked up with that of death, with the thought that we inevitably draw closer and closer to it, with the horror of decay.
despair phrases comfort
I was very fond of Lagneau’s phrase: “I have no comfort but in my absolute despair.