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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.

Simone de Beauvoir

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Simone de Beauvoir
Age: 78 †
Born: 1908
Born: January 9
Died: 1986
Died: April 14
Author
Autobiographer
Diarist
Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Philosopher
Political Activist
Political Philosopher
Paris
France
Simone-Lucie-Ernestine-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir
Castor
Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir
Worst
Ideals
Brooded
Wife
Husband
Grasping
Night
Instead
Happily
Together
Relationship
Nights
Going
Memories
Bringing
Time
Attitude
Sexual
Life
Goes
Ideal
Mistake
Former

More quotes by Simone de Beauvoir

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The state of emotional intoxication allows one to grasp existence in one's self and in the other, as both subjectivity and passivity. The two partners merge in this ambiguous unity each one is freed of his own presence and achieves immediate communication with the other.
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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.
Simone de Beauvoir
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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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There are so many problems. Women can go to work on these as well without giving up their feminism.
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I am incapable of conceiving infinity, and yet I do not accept finity. I want this adventure that is the context of my life to go on without end.
Simone de Beauvoir
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Anais Nin shows an occasional grace in writing, but her work is quite foreign to me, precisely because she wants so much to be feminine and not feminist. And then she is so gaga before so many men. She talks about men I know in France, men who were less than nothing, and she considers them kings, extraordinary people.
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There has to be a certain relationship between the life and the writing style, and that is really a problem.
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Sign of old age: distress at all leave-takings, all separations. And the sadness of memories, because I'm aware they're condemned to death.
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At the moment of their emancipation, women have a need to write their own histories.
Simone de Beauvoir
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Every time a man dies, a child dies too, and an adolescent and a young man as well everyone weeps for the one who was dear to him.
Simone de Beauvoir
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There was a time, in the nineteenth century, for example, when women spoke mostly about the house, children, birth, and so forth, because it was their domain. That's changing a little, now.
Simone de Beauvoir
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I consider it almost antifeminist to say that there is a feminine nature which expresses itself differently, that a woman speaks her body more than a man, because after all, men also speak their bodies when they write. Everything is implicated in the work of a writer.
Simone de Beauvoir
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Whether you think of it as heavenly or as earthly, if you love life immortality is no consolation for death.
Simone de Beauvoir
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That a whole part of the middle class detests me... is utterly normal. I would be troubled if the contrary were true.
Simone de Beauvoir
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If you live long enough, you'll see that every victory turns into a defeat.
Simone de Beauvoir
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That is what chills your spine when you read an account of a suicide: not the frail corpse hanging from the window bars but what happened inside that heart immediately before.
Simone de Beauvoir
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The whole world was nothing but an exile with no hope of a return.
Simone de Beauvoir
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It is not mere chance that makes families speak of a child who is 'extraordinary for his age' and also of an old man who is 'extraordinary for his age' the extraordinariness lies in their behaving like human beings when they are either not yet or no longer men.
Simone de Beauvoir
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Why does one exist? That's not my problem. One does exist. The thing to do is to take no notice but go at it on the run and to keep on going right on until you die.
Simone de Beauvoir
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If you try consciously to be avant-garde, it's a little dangerous, like the present state of modern painting, where dealers try to be avant-garde, and under this pretext, painters take some old scraps and call it avant-garde.
Simone de Beauvoir