Simone de Beauvoir
Simone de Beauvoir
Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir; 9 January 1908 – 14 April 1986) was a French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist and social theorist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, she had a significant influence on both feminist existentialism and feminist theory...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth9 January 1908
CountryFrance
tasks cleaning made
Few tasks are more like the torture of Sisyphus than housework, with its endless repetition: the clean becomes soiled, the soiled is made clean, over and over, day after day.
helping-others people humanity
The fact that we are human beings is infinitely more important than all the peculiarities that distinguish human beings from one another.
fate civilization males
One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. No biological, psychological, or economic fate determines the figure that the human female presents in society; it is civilization as a whole that produces this creature, intermediate between male and eunuch, which is described as feminine.
heart men deterioration
The younger and healthier a woman is and the more her new and glossy body seems destined for eternal freshness, the less useful is artifice; but the carnal weakness of this prey that man takes and its ominous deterioration always have to be hidden from him...In any case, the more traits and proportions of a woman seem contrived, the more she delighted the heart of man because she seemed to escape the metamorphosis of natural things. The result is this strange paradox that by desiring to grasp nature, but transfigured, in woman, man destines her to artifice.
moral
To be moral is to discover fundamentally ones own being.
body world projects
The body is not a thing, it is a situation: it is our grasp on the world and our sketch of our project
adventure feet knights
The knight departing for new adventures offends his lady, yet she has nothing but contempt for him if he remains at her feet.
children women world
One can hardly tell women that washing up saucepans is their divine mission, [so] they are told that bringing up children is their divine mission. But the way things are in the world, bringing up children has a great deal in common with washing up saucepans.
library adrift literature
Literature is born when something in life goes slightly adrift.
civilization silence age
Society turns away from the aged worker as though he belonged to another species. That is why the whole question is buried in a conspiracy of silence. Old age exposes the failure of our entire civilization.
thinking people balls
People seem to think that if you keep your head empty you automatically fill your balls.
giving age goes-on
There is only one solution if old age is not to be an absurd parody of our former life, and that is to go on pursuing ends that give our existence a meaning.
issues arrogance males
If the feminine issue is so absurd, is because the male's arrogance made it "a discussion
life death sex
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.