Simone de Beauvoir

Patience is one of those feminine qualities which have their origin in our oppression but should be preserved after our liberation.

— Simone de Beauvoir

On the evenings when my parents held parties, the drawing-room mirrors multiplied to infinity the scintillations of a crystal chandelier. Mama would…

— 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

“A menudo curar es mutilar.”

— Simone de Beauvoir

No woman should be authorized to stay at home and raise her children. Society should be totally different. Women should not have…

— Simone de Beauvoir

One can not start by saying that our earthly destiny has or has not importance, for it depends upon us to give…

— Simone de Beauvoir

Woman has always been man's dependent, if not his slave; the two sexes have never shaped the world in equality. And even…

— Simone de Beauvoir

“When he describes woman, each writer discloses his general ethics and the special idea he has of himself; and in her he…

— Simone de Beauvoir

“In the unfertilised egg not even the concept of femaleness is as yet established. As Hegel justly remarks the sexual relation cannot…

— 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

...counselling man to treat her as a slave while persuading her that she is a queen.

— Simone de Beauvoir

What an odd thing a diary is: the things you omit are more important than those you put in.

— Simone de Beauvoir

“She compensated for this sense of inferiority by making fun of everything. I did not notice it then, but she never made…

— Simone de Beauvoir

Self-knowledge is no guarantee of happiness, but it is on the side of happiness and can supply the courage to fight for…

— Simone de Beauvoir

There is not a single line in this diary that does not call for a correction or a denial...Yes: throughout these pages…

— Simone de Beauvoir

“Forced motherhood results in bringing miserable children into the world, children whose parents cannot feed them, who become victims of public assistance…

— Simone de Beauvoir

I have never read a really good novel written by a man where women are portrayed as they truly are. They can…

— Simone de Beauvoir

“We had taken to living out of step. I resented his gaiety now that I had become low-spirited.”

— Simone de Beauvoir

If women really did have complete equality with men, society would be completely overturned.

— Simone de Beauvoir

The emancipation of women must be the work of women themselves, independent of the class struggle.

— Simone de Beauvoir

“there was also a celebrated official sculptor whose works disfigured the whole of Paris,”

— 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…

— 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

I think that The Second Sex will seem an old, dated book, after a while. But nonetheless, a book which will have…

— Simone de Beauvoir

One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. No biological, psychological, or economic fate determines the figure that the human female…

— Simone de Beauvoir