Life Quotes by Simone de Beauvoir

Living by proxy is always a precarious expedient.

— Simone de Beauvoir

Old age is life's parody.

— Simone de Beauvoir

No existence can be validly fulfilled if it is limited to itself.

— Simone de Beauvoir

“Authentic love must be founded on reciprocal recognition of two freedoms...”

— Simone de Beauvoir

Anyway I know only too well that all life is nothing but a brief reprieve from death.

— Simone de Beauvoir

The earthly meaning of eternal life was death, and she refused to die.

— Simone de Beauvoir

“One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others.”

— Simone de Beauvoir

Literature is born when something in life goes slightly adrift.

— Simone de Beauvoir

I take on a shape and an existence only if I first throw myself into the world by loving, by doing.

— Simone de Beauvoir

Let women be provided with living strength of their own.

— Simone de Beauvoir

“Surviving one’s own life, living on the other side of it like a spectator, is quite comfortable after all. You no longer…

— Simone de Beauvoir

Dwelling-place and food are useful for life but give it no significance: the immediate goals of the housekeeper are only means, not…

— Simone de Beauvoir

It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our lives that we must draw our strength to live and our…

— Simone de Beauvoir

The individuals who seem to us most outstanding, who are honored with the name of genius, are those who have proposed to…

— 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…

— Simone de Beauvoir

I am incapable of conceiving infinity, and yet I do not accept finity. I want this adventure that is the context of…

— Simone de Beauvoir

Existence must be asserted in the present if one does not want all life to be defined as an escape toward nothingness.

— Simone de Beauvoir

there is a poetry in making preserves; the housewife has caught duration in the snare of sugar, she has enclosed life in…

— Simone de Beauvoir

The state of emotional intoxication allows one to grasp existence in one's self and in the other, as both subjectivity and passivity.…

— Simone de Beauvoir

“All she had to do was make the simplest of gestures - open her hands and let go her hold. She lifted…

— Simone de Beauvoir

Two separate beings, in different circumstances, face to face in freedom and seeking justification of their existence through one another, will always…

— Simone de Beauvoir

Eating, sleeping, cleaning - the years no longer rise up toward heaven, they lie spread out ahead, gray and identical. The battle…

— Simone de Beauvoir

On the day when it will be possible for woman to love not in her weakness but in her strength, not to…

— Simone de Beauvoir

“Scents, patterns of light and shade, winds and hurricanes — all pulsed inwardly through my own sinews and veins: so much so,…

— Simone de Beauvoir

Let women be provided with living strength of their own. Let them have the means to attack the world and wrest from…

— Simone de Beauvoir

Existentialism does not offer to the reader the consolations of an abstract evasion: existentialism proposes no evasion. On the contrary, its ethics…

— Simone de Beauvoir

“The thing I understood least of all was that knowledge led to despair and damnation. Our spiritual mentor had not said that…

— Simone de Beauvoir

“The books I liked became a Bible from which I drew advice and support; I copied out long passages from them; I…

— Simone de Beauvoir

The father's life is surrounded by mysterious prestige: the hours he spends in the home, the room where he works, the objects…

— Simone de Beauvoir

“It has never been very easy for me to live, though I am always very happy—maybe because I want so much to…

— Simone de Beauvoir

The notion of ambiguity must not be confused with that of absurdity. To declare that existence is absurd is to deny that…

— Simone de Beauvoir

“The comradeship that welded our lives together made a superfluous mockery of any other bond we might have forged for ourselves.What, for…

— Simone de Beauvoir

“The people of former times [...] they're dead that's the only thing they have over the living but in their own day…

— Simone de Beauvoir

In a way, literature is true than life,' he said to himself. 'On paper, you say exactly and completely what you feel.…

— Simone de Beauvoir

Tonight, once more, life sinks its teeth into my heart.

— Simone de Beauvoir

Today, however, we are having a hard time living because we are so bent on outwitting death.

— Simone de Beauvoir

I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom.

— Simone de Beauvoir

There is no justification for present existence other than its expansion into an indefinitely open future.

— Simone de Beauvoir

Whether you think of it as heavenly or as earthly, if you love life immortality is no consolation for death.

— Simone de Beauvoir

“Every individual concerned to justify his existence feels that his existence involves an undefined need to transcend himself, to engage in freely…

— Simone de Beauvoir