Quotes from Simone de Beauvoir

Wenigstens eine kleine Weile lang mußte ich, jedem Anspruch entrückt, in Frieden mit mir selbst sprechen können, ohne daß irgendjemand mich dabei unterbrach.

Defending the truth is not something one does out of a sense of duty or to allay guilt complexes, but is a reward in itself.

At the present time there still exist many doctrines which choose to leave in the shadow certain troubling aspects of a too complex situation. But their attempt to lie to us is in vain. Cowardice does not pay. Those reasonable metaphysics, those consoling ethics with which they would like to entice us only accentuate the disorder from which we suffer.

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.

I]'m reliving it street by street, hour by hour, with the mission of neutralizing it, and transforming it into an inoffensive past that i can keep in my heart without either disowning it or suffering from it. That's not easy. It's at once painful and poetic.

If it is said men oppress women, the husband reacts indigntantly; he feels oppressed: he is; but in fact, it is the masculine code, the society developed by males and in their interest, that has defined the feminine condition in a form that is now for both sexes a source of distress.

L'action des femmes n'a jamais été qu'une agitation symbolique; elles n'ont gagné que ce que les hommes ont bien voulu leur concéder; elles n'ont rien pris: elles ont reçu.

Jaques was only what he was; but from a distance he became something more, became everything to me, everything I did not possess. It was to him I owed pains and pleasures whose violence alone saved me from the deserts of boredom in which I found myself bogged down.

insano?lunun mutsuzlu?u tek bir ?eyden geliyor:bir odada oturup kalmay? bilmemekten!

Gozar de las cosas bellas le basta; acepta el lujo y la vida fácil, le gusta la felicidad. Yo necesito una vida devoradora. Necesito obrar, gastarme, realizarme, necesito un fin que alcanzar, dificultades que vencer, una obra que cumplir. No estoy hecha para el lujo. Nunca podrá satisfacerme lo que le satisface.

L'ideologie chrétienne n'a pas peu contribué à l'oppression de la femme.

every time she acts like a human being, she is said to be imitating the male.

Women – the Parcae and Moirai – weave human destiny; but they also cut the threads. In most folk representations, Death is woman and women mourn the dead because death is their work.fn6 Thus, Mother Earth has a face of darkness: she is chaos, where everything comes from and must return to one day; she is Nothingness.

Saint Thomas declared that woman was an "inessential" being, which, from a masculine point of view, is a way of positing the accidental character of sexuality.

I cannot withdraw into myself. I exist, outside myself and everywhere in the world. There is not an inch of my path which does not encroach on the path of another: there is no way of being that can prevent me from overflowing myself at every moment. This life that I weave with my own substance, it offers other men a thousand unknown faces, it crosses impetuously their fate.

La raison profonde qui à l'origine de l'histoire voue la femme au travail domestique et lui interdit de prendre part à la construction du monde, c'est son asservissement à la fonction génératrice.

In the afternoons I would sit out on the balcony outside the dining-room; there, level with the tops of the trees that shaded the boulevard Raspail, I would watch the passers-by.

Ik koos het bestaan niet, maar ik besta. Een ongerijmdheid die verantwoordelijk voor zichzelf is, dat ben ik.

Quand elles [les femmes] sont intervenues dans le cours du monde, c'est en accord avec les hommes, dans des perspectives masculines.

Et c'était simple de lui dire de s'asseoir ; quand on pense à tout ce qu'on pourrait faire et qu'on ne fait pas ! toutes les occasions qu'on laisse échapper ! on a pas l'idée, pas l'élan ; au lieu d'être ouvert on est fermé ; c'est ça le grand péché : le péché par omission.

No hay nada menos natural que vestirse de mujer; sin duda las ropas masculinas son también artificiales, pero más cómodas y sencillas, están pensadas para favorecer la acción y no para entorpecerla.

No dia em que for possível à mulher amar na totalidade, não na sua fraqueza, não para fugir de si mesma mas para se encontrar, não para se demitir mas para se afirmar, nesse dia o amor tornar-se-á para ela, como para o homem, fonte de vida e não perigo mortal

One night I summoned God, if He really existed, to show Himself to me. He didn't, and I never addressed another word to Him. In my heart of hearts I was very glad He didn't exist. I should have hated it if what was going on here below had had to end up in eternity.

Je sens en moi quelque chose de trouble qui me fait peur, une violence qui m'épuise. Mais j'accepte la grande aventure d'être moi.