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Self-consciousness is not knowledge but a story one tells about oneself.
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
Self
Tells
Oneself
Consciousness
Knowledge
Story
Stories
More quotes by Simone de Beauvoir
To give space when what one most yearns for is closeness, that is both the great test and great tragedy of love.
Simone de Beauvoir
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.
Simone de Beauvoir
My life was hurrying, racing tragically toward its end. And yet at the same time it was dripping so slowly, so very slowly now, hour by hour, minute by minute. One always has to wait until the sugar melts, the memory dies, the wound scars over, the sun sets, the unhappiness lifts and fades away.
Simone de Beauvoir
When we abolish the slavery of half of humanity, together with the whole system of hypocrisy it implies, then the division of humanity will reveal its genuine significance and the human couple will find its true form.
Simone de Beauvoir
Habit has a kind of poetry.
Simone de Beauvoir
Work almost always has a double aspect: it is a bondage, a wearisome drudgery but it is also a source of interest, a steadying element, a factor that helps to integrate the worker with society. Retirement may be looked upon either as a prolonged holiday or as a rejection, a being thrown on to the scrap-heap.
Simone de Beauvoir
…but all day long I would be training myself to think, to understand, to criticize, to know myself I was seeking for the absolute truth: this preoccupation did not exactly encourage polite conversation.
Simone de Beauvoir
The time that one gains cannot be accumulated in a storehouse it is contradictory to want to save up existence, which, the fact is, exists only by being spent and there is a good case for showing that airplanes, machines, the telephone, and the radio do not make men of today happier than those of former times.
Simone de Beauvoir
Buying is a profound pleasure.
Simone de Beauvoir
Tonight, once more, life sinks its teeth into my heart.
Simone de Beauvoir
Man is a talking animal and he will always let himself be swayed by the power of the word. Machines won't change human nature.
Simone de Beauvoir
Tragedies are all right for a while: you are concerned, you are curious, you feel good. And then it gets repetitive, it doesn't advance, it grows dreadfully boring: it is so very boring, even for me.
Simone de Beauvoir
There has to be a certain relationship between the life and the writing style, and that is really a problem.
Simone de Beauvoir
All the idols made by man, however terrifying they may be, are in point of fact subordinate to him, and that is why he will always have it in his power to destroy them.
Simone de Beauvoir
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.
Simone de Beauvoir
The torment that so many young women know, bound hand and foot by love and motherhood, without having forgotten their former dreams.
Simone de Beauvoir
I think that The Second Sex will seem an old, dated book, after a while. But nonetheless, a book which will have made its contribution. At least, I hope so.
Simone de Beauvoir
Society cares about the individual only in so far as he is profitable. The young know this. Their anxiety as they enter in upon social life matches the anguish of the old as they are excluded from it.
Simone de Beauvoir
To refuse everything, to say, even when there is something which really should be done, Ah, that's no longer feminist, is a pessimistic, even masochistic tendency in women, the result of having been habituated to inertia, to pessimism.
Simone de Beauvoir
The fact that we are human beings is infinitely more important than all the peculiarities that distinguish human beings from one another.
Simone de Beauvoir
