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For me, the problem of time is linked up with that of death, with the thought that we inevitably draw closer and closer to it, with the horror of decay.

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
Draws
Horror
Death
Thought
Inevitably
Problem
Linked
Time
Decay
Closer
Draw

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It's not a very big step from contentment to complacency.
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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.
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To give space when what one most yearns for is closeness, that is both the great test and great tragedy of love.
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The way I approached a question, my habit of mind, the way I looked at things, what I took for granted - all this was myself and it did not seem to me that I could alter it.
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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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If you haven't been happy very young, you can still be happy later on, but it's much harder. You need more luck.
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To create a language all of a piece which would be a women's language, that I find quite insane. There does not exist a mathematics which is only a women's mathematics, or a feminine science.
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--There you are. The sight of the changing world is miraculous and heartbreaking, both at the same time. --But so it is for me too. The heartbreaking side of growing old is not in the things around one but in oneself.
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No one is more arrogant toward women, more aggressive or scornful, than the man who is anxious about his virility.
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I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth - and truth rewarded me.
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Ce n'est gue' re que dans les asiles que les coquettes gardent avec ente tement une foi entie' re en des regards absents normalement, elles re clament des te moins. Women fond of dress are hardly ever entirely satisfied not to be seen, except among the insane usually they want witnesses.
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Dwelling-place and food are useful for life but give it no significance: the immediate goals of the housekeeper are only means, not true ends.
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The ballot box is a most inadequate mechanism of change.
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However gifted an individual is at the outset, if his or her talents cannot be developed because of his or her social condition, because of the surrounding circumstances, these talents will be still-born.
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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.
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Because we are separated everything separates us, even our efforts to join each other.
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Literature in France seems to be undergoing a crisis now, and nothing comes immediately to mind.
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Retirement may be looked upon either as a prolonged holiday or as a rejection, a being thrown on to the scrap-heap.
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When women act like women, they are accused of being inferior. When women act like human beings, they are accused of behaving like men.
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Christianity gave eroticism its savor of sin and legend when it endowed the human female with a soul.
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