Quotes from Simone de Beauvoir

L'homme a réussi à asservir la femme : mais dans cette mesure il l'a dépouillée de ce qui en rendait la possession désirable.

Essere donna non è un dato naturale, ma il risultato di una storia. Non c'è un destino biologico e psicologico che definisce la donna in quanto tale. Tale destino è la conseguenza della storia della civiltà, e per ogni donna la storia della sua vita.

Life is occupied in both perpetuating itself and in surpassing itself; if all it does is maintain itself, then living is only not dying, and human existence is indistinguishable from an absurd vegetation; a life justifies itself only if its effort to perpetuate itself is integrated into its surpassing and if this surpassing has no other limits than those which the subject assigns himself.

I pensieri vanno e vengono a loro piacere, nella nostra testa. Non lo si fa apposta a credere a ciò che si crede.

But it is impossible for anyone to say 'I am sacrificing myself' without feeling bitterness.**

Toute expérience de perte produit une brisure mais par la grâce de la littérature cette brisure peut se transformer en lien.

It is useless to try to integrate life and death and to behave rationally in the presence of something that is not rational : each must manage as well as he can in the tumult of his feelings.

Su desnudez ya no me incomodaba: ya no se trataba de mi madre sino de un pobre cuerpo atormentado.

The Other is singularly defined according to the singular way the One chooses to posit himself.

Pero nadie puede decir: «Yo me sacrifico», sin sentir amargura.

Mie imi trebuie o viata devotata. Am nevoie sa actionez, sa ma agit, sa creez; am nevoie de un tel pe care sa-l ating, de greutati de invins, de o opera de realizat. Nu sunt facuta pentru lux.

Curiosa cosa, un diario: lo que uno calla es más importante que lo que anota.)

Para mí, mi madre siempre había existido y nunca había pensado seriamente que la vería desaparecer un día cercano. Su fin se situaba, como su nacimiento, en un tiempo mítico. Cuando yo me decía: tiene edad de morir, eran palabras vacías, como tantas otras. Por primera vez percibía en mi madre un cadáver en cierne.

Her home is her earthly lot, the expression of her social worth, and her intimate truth. Because she does nothing, she avidly seeks herself in what she has.

Comprendí en seguida que formaban parte de los placeres de los viajes las amistades sin futuro y el leve desgarramieto de las despedidas.

If the question of women is so trivial, it is because masculine arrogance turned it into a quarrel; when people quarrel, they no longer reason well.

Je suis un intellectuel. Ça m'agace qu'on fasse de ce mot une insulte : les gens ont l'air de croire que le vide de leur cerveau leur meuble les couilles.

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

Aristotle said. "We should regard women's nature as suffering from natural defectiveness." And Saint Thomas in his turn decreed that woman was an "incomplete man," an "incidental" being.

Estaba dispuesta a negar el espacio y el tiempo antes de admitir que el amor puede no ser eterno.

Algunos días detestaba el mar; era monótono e infinito como la ausencia.

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 not to the sex that brings forth but to that which kills.

The day when it will be possible for the woman to love in her strength and not in her weakness, not to escape from herself but to find herself, not out of resignation but to affirm herself, love will become for her as for man the source of life and not a mortal danger.

To will is to engage myself to persevere in my will.