Simone de Beauvoir Quotes

What did today's sacrifices matter: the Universe lay ahead in the future. What did burnings at the stake and massacres matter? The Universe was somewhere else, always somewhere else! And it isn't anywhere: there are only men, men eternally divided.

We were two of a kind, and our relationship would endure as long as we did: but it could not make up entirely for the fleeting riches to be had from encounters with different people.

He walks in the street, a picture of modesty in his felt hat and his gabardine suit, and all the while he's thinking, "I'm immortal." The world is his, time is his, and I'm nothing but an insect.

[http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/beauvoir/ "Simone de Beauvoir" by Debra Bergoffen at Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]

The present enshrines the past—and in the past all history has been made by men.

Each of us is responsible for everything and to every human being.

I'm never afraid. But in my case it's nothing to be proud of.

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.

There is only one good. And that is to act according to the dictates of one's conscience.

It is old age, rather than death, that is to be contrasted with life. Old age is life's parody, whereas death transforms life into a destiny: in a way it preserves it by giving it the absolute dimension. Death does away with time.

It was as though some stubborn god spent their time in an immutable and absurd balancing act between life and death, prosperity and poverty.

One is not born a genius, one becomes a genius; and the feminine situation has up to the present rendered this becoming practically impossible.

They were walking side by side, but each was alone.

[C]'est la vraie générosité ; vous donnez tout et rien ne semble jamais vous coûter.