Simone De Beauvoir

He formed his sentences hesitantly and then threw them at me with such force that I felt as if I were receiving a present each time

The body is the instrument of our hold on the world.

‎A day in which I don't write leaves a taste of ashes.

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.

And without a doubt it is more comfortable to endure blind bondage than to work for one's liberation; the dead, too, are better suited to the earth than the living.

The individual is defined only by his relationship to the world and to other individuals; he exists only by transcending himself, and his freedom can be achieved only through the freedom of others. He justifies his existence by a movement which, like freedom, springs from his heart but which leads outside of himself.

To make oneself an object, to make oneself passive, is a very different thing from being a passive object.

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

The day had been spent in the expectation of these hours, and now they were crumbling away, becoming, in their turn, another period of expectancy...It was a journey without end, leading to an indefinite future, eternally shifting just as she was reaching the present.

I could see no reason for being sad. It´s just that it makes me unhappy not to feel happy.

He reflected. 'I know a lot of different kids of people; what I want is to show each of them how the others really are. You hear so many lies!

I went to get a detective story. You have to kill time. But time will kill me too - and there´s the true, preestablished balance.

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.

Even if one is neither vain nor self-obsessed, it is so extraordinary to be oneself - exactly oneself and no one else - and so unique, that it seems natural that one should also be unique for someone else.

Indeed, there is nothing more arbitrary than intervening as a stranger in a destiny which is not ours.

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.

I cannot be angry at God, in whom I do not believe.

But women do not say 'We', except at some congress of feminists or similar formal demonstration; men say 'women', and women use the same word in referring to themselves.

There is only one good. And that is to act according to the dictates of one's conscience.

I've always been keenly aware of the passing of time. I've always thought that I was old. Even when I was twelve, I thought it was awful to be thirty. I felt that something was lost. At the same time, I was aware of what I could gain, and certain periods of my life have taught me a great deal. But, in spite of everything, I've always been haunted by the passing of time and by the fact that death keeps closing in on us.

In the face of an obstacle which is impossible to overcome, stubbornness is stupid.