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aabcf2e
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Youth and what the Italians so prettily call stamina. The vigor, the fire, that enables you to love and create. When you've lost that, you've lost everything.
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Simone de Beauvoir |
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23216b3
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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.
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Simone de Beauvoir |
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9382028
|
A life is such a strange object, at one moment translucent, at another utterly opaque, an object I make with my own hands, an object imposed on me, an object for which the world provides the raw material and then steals it from me again, pulverized by events, scattered, broken, scored yet retaining its unity; how heavy it is and how inconsistent: this contradiction breeds many misunderstandings.
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Simone de Beauvoir |
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e6f0cd5
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The books I liked became a Bible from which I drew advice and support; I copied out long passages from them; I memorized new canticles and new litanies, psalms, proverbs, and prophecies, and I sanctified every incident in my life by the recital of these sacred texts. My emotions, my tears, and my hopes were no less sincere on account of that; the words and the cadences, the lines and the verses were not aids to make believe: but they rescue..
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Simone de Beauvoir |
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f156ae1
|
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!
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Simone de Beauvoir |
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754f82e
|
She offered her mouth to him, as if enchanted. A Persian princess, a little Indian, a fox, a morning glory, a lovely wisteria--it always pleased them when you told them they looked like something, like something else.
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Simone de Beauvoir |
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d1de58e
|
The curse which lies upon marriage is that too often the individuals are joined in their weakness rather than in their strength, each asking from the other instead of finding pleasure in giving. It is even more deceptive to dream of gaining through the child a plenitude, a warmth, a value, which one is unable to create for oneself; the child brings joy only to the woman who is capable of disinterestedly desiring the happiness of another, to..
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Simone de Beauvoir |
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16aa070
|
A freedom which is interested only in denying freedom must be denied. And it is not true that the recognition of the freedom of others limits my own freedom: to be free is not to have the power to do anything you like; it is to be able to surpass the given toward an open future; the existence of others as a freedom defines my situation and is even the condition of my own freedom. I am oppressed if I am thrown into prison, but not if I am ke..
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morality
existentialism
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Simone de Beauvoir |
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ca17601
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I love you, with a touch of tragedy and quite madly.
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Simone de Beauvoir |
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8816958
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all success cloaks a surrender
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Simone de Beauvoir |
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2b6f5b6
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But women do not say 'We', except at some congress of feminists or similar formal demonstration; men say 'women', and women use the same word in referring to themselves.
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Simone de Beauvoir |
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93d1841
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Woman is shut up in a kitchen or in a boudoir, and astonishment is expressed that her horizon is limited. Her wings are clipped, and it is found deplorable that she cannot fly. Let but the future be opened to her, and she will no longer be compelled to linger in the present.
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Simone de Beauvoir |
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7855e97
|
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. That's the worst sin of all - the sin of omission.
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Simone de Beauvoir |
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57e7ce7
|
You have never had any confidence in him. And if he has no confidence in himself it is because he sees himself through your eyes.
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Simone de Beauvoir |
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8071347
|
In fact, the sickness I was suffering from was that I had been driven out of the paradise of childhood and had not found my place in the world of adults. I had set myself up in the absolute in order to gaze down upon this world which was rejecting me; now, if I wanted to act, to write a book, to express myself, I would have to go back down there: but my contempt had annihilated it, and I could see nothing but emptiness. The fact is that I h..
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Simone de Beauvoir |
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daecfe7
|
As 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.
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philosophers
existentialism
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Simone de Beauvoir |
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15c5425
|
I was very fond of Lagneau's phrase: "I have no comfort but in my absolute despair."
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Simone de Beauvoir |
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b739203
|
The body is the instrument of our hold on the world.
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Simone de Beauvoir |
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02d4230
|
My worst mistake has been not grasping that time goes by. It was going by and there I was, set in the attitude of the ideal wife of an ideal husband. Instead of bringing our sexual relationship to life again I brooded happily over memories of our former nights together.
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Simone de Beauvoir |
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a1f297d
|
To will oneself moral and to will oneself free are one and the same decision.
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Simone de Beauvoir |
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4eba7f5
|
'kthr m kn yjdhbny lyh DHkth: fk'nm sqT, mn Gyr ntZr, `l~ kwkb lys hw kwkbh, f'khdh yktshf Trfth l`jyb@. w Hyn knt DHkth tnfjr, kn kl shy ybdw ly jdydan, 'khdhan, ry'`an.
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Simone de Beauvoir |
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fc2e68b
|
I 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, bu..
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Simone de Beauvoir |
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9c1ceaf
|
I think that where you go wrong is that you imagine that your reasons for living ought to fall on you, ready-made from heaven, whereas we have to find them for ourselves.
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Simone de Beauvoir |
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257dcb4
|
It is not in giving life but in risking life that man is raised above the animal; that is why superiority has been accorded in humanity no to the sex that brings forth but to that which kills.
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feminism
|
Simone de Beauvoir |
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8de869e
|
fy lryf knt 'Hs hnk wjwd llh 'kthr mm knt 'Hsh fy brys. w knt klm ltSqt bl'rD klmzddt qrban mnh, w knt kl nzh@ Sl@ lh. kn ykhyl ly 'nh `l~ nHw m bHj@ l~ `ynyW ltkwn ll'shjr 'lwnh. w Hrr@ lshms, w rTwb@lnd~, 'n~ ldhhn mjrd 'n yHshm l `br jsdy? lqd j`l hdhh l'rD llbshr, w j`l lbshr lyshhdw bmHsnh. w Hyn knt 'jtz fy lSbH lHwjz l'wGl fy lGbt fnm hw ldhy kn yndyny, w kn ynZr ly bfrH w 'n 'nZr l~ hdh l`lm ldhy khlqh l'rh.
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Simone de Beauvoir |
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698fcb7
|
I tried to love you less.I couldn't.
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Simone de Beauvoir |
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4795c77
|
Self-knowledge is no guarantee of happiness, but it is on the side of happiness and can supply the courage to fight for it.
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Simone de Beauvoir |
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5c0b2ea
|
Weakness' is weakness only in light of the aims man sets for himself, the instruments at his disposal and the laws he imposes.
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men
weakness
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Simone de Beauvoir |
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34d51ba
|
That the child is the supreme aim of woman is a statement having precisely the value of an advertising slogan.
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Simone de Beauvoir |
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6dea3fd
|
The younger and healthier a woman is and the more her new and glossy body seems destined for eternal freshness, the less useful is artifice; but the carnal weakness of this prey that man takes and its ominous deterioration always have to be hidden from him...In any case, the more traits and proportions of a woman seem contrived, the more she delighted the heart of man because she seemed to escape the metamorphosis of natural things. The res..
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feminism
|
Simone de Beauvoir |
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abc8253
|
He formed his sentences hesitantly and then threw them at me with such force that I felt as if I were receiving a present each time
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Simone de Beauvoir |
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f0e70c1
|
There you are. The sight of the changing world is miraculous and heartbreaking, both at the same time. --But so it is for me too. The heartbreaking side of growing old is not in the things around one but in oneself.
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Simone de Beauvoir |
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bd5db63
|
The way I approached a question, my habit of mind, the way I looked at things, what I took for granted - all this was myself and it did not seem to me that I could alter it.
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Simone de Beauvoir |
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4710050
|
You said something very true the other day: that for us, nudity begins with the face.
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Simone de Beauvoir |
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3c5f85f
|
Man must not attempt to dispel the ambiguity of his being but, on the contrary, accept the task of realizing it.
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Simone de Beauvoir |
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60aeec8
|
There was still a question in her eyes-- one that she did not like to put into words.
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Simone de Beauvoir |
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7fdb436
|
In particular those who are condemned to stagnation are often pronounced happy on the pretext that happiness consists in being at rest. This notion we reject, for our perspective is that of existentialist ethics. Every subject plays his part as such specifically through exploits or projects that serve as a mode of transcendence; he achieves liberty only through a continual reaching out towards other liberties. There is no justification for ..
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philosophy
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Simone de Beauvoir |
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2b33450
|
The past is not a peaceful landscape lying there behind me, a country in which I can stroll wherever I please, and will gradually show me all its secret hills and dales. As I was moving forward, so it was crumbling. Most of the wreckage that can be seen is colourless, distorted, frozen: its meaning escapes me... all that's left is a skeleton. I shall never find my plans again, my hopes and fears - I shall not find myself.
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Simone de Beauvoir |
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bca2c6e
|
A man never begins by presenting himself as an individual of a certain sex; it goes without saying that he is a man.
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Simone de Beauvoir |
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dde3879
|
There's something tragic about you. Your feeling for the absolute. You were made to believe in God and spend your life in a convent.' There are too many with that vocation. God would have had to love only me.
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Simone de Beauvoir |
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e765e13
|
A couple who go on living together merely because that was how they began, without any other reason: was that what we were turning into?
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Simone de Beauvoir |
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787dc4c
|
But I must admit I didn't like that idea; do the same thing as everyone else. Eating to live, living to eat - that had been the nightmare of my adolescence. If it meant going back to that, if would be just as well to turn on the gas at once. But I suppose everyone thinks of things like that: let's turn on the gas at once. And you don't turn it on.
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Simone de Beauvoir |
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1a34f1d
|
Every war, every revolution, demands the sacrifice of a generation, of a collectivity, by those who undertake it.
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war
|
Simone de Beauvoir |
|
e364051
|
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.
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death
existentialism
|
Simone de Beauvoir |