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
class would-be normal
That a whole part of the middle class detests me... is utterly normal. I would be troubled if the contrary were true.
kind habit
Habit has a kind of poetry.
running writing sleep
I willingly trust myself to chance. I let my thoughts wander, I digress, not only sitting at my work, but all day long, all night even. It often happens that a sentence suddenly runs through my head before I go to bed, or when I am unable to sleep, and I get up again and write it down.
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.
revenge reality literature
Literature takes its revenge on reality by making it the slave of fiction ...
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.
nature men united-states
Americans are nature-lovers: but they only admit of nature proofed and corrected by man.
fate names humanity
The individuals who seem to us most outstanding, who are honored with the name of genius, are those who have proposed to enact the fate of all humanity in their personal existences.
sex real perfectly-natural
It is perfectly natural for the future woman to feel indignant at the limitations posed upon her by her sex. The real question is not why she should reject them: the problem is rather to understand why she accepts them.
cooking revolution creation
Cooking is revolution and creation ...
adventure solitude lasts
The misfortune is that although everyone must come to [death], each experiences the adventure in solitude. We never left Maman during those last days... and yet we were profoundly separated from her.
being-yourself children responsibility
It's frightening to think that you mark your children merely by being yourself. It seems unfair. You can't assume the responsibility for everything you do --or don't do.
retirement work holiday
Work almost always has a double aspect: it is a bondage, a wearisome drudgery; but it is also a source of interest, a steadying element, a factor that helps to integrate the worker with society. Retirement may be looked upon either as a prolonged holiday or as a rejection, a being thrown on to the scrap-heap.
arrogance ifs
It's only arrogance if you're wrong.