Explore Quotes by Simone De Beauvoir

There is no such thing as a natural death: nothing that happens to a man is ever natural, since his presence calls the world into question. All men must die: but for every man his death is an accident and, even if he knows it and consents to it, an unjustifiable violation.

No woman should be authorized to stay at home and raise her children. Society should be totally different. Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one.

We must not confuse the present with the past. With regard to the past, no further action is possible.

Each of us is responsible for everything and to every human being.

I don't want to be just another blade of grass.

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. The housewife wears herself out marking time: she makes nothing, simply perpetuates the present … Eating, sleeping, cleaning – the years no longer rise up towards heaven, they lie spread out ahead, grey and identical. The battle against dust and dirt is never won.

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

The curse which lies upon marriage is that too often the individuals are joined in their weakness rather than in their strength -each asking from the other instead of finding pleasure in giving. It is even more deceptive to dream of gaining through the child a plenitude, a warmth, a value, which one is unable to create for oneself; the child brings joy only to the woman who is capable of disinterestedly desiring the happiness of another, to one who without being wrapped up in self seeks to transcend her own existence.

If her functioning as a female is not enough to define woman, if we decline also to explain her through "the eternal feminine," and if nevertheless we admit, provisionally, that women do exist, then we must face the question: what is a woman?

Those interested in perpetuating present conditions are always in tears about the marvelous past that is about to disappear, without having so much as a smile for the young future.

You can't assume the responsibility for everything you do or don't do.

The torment that so many young women know, bound hand and foot by love and motherhood, without having forgotten their former dreams.

A man would never get the notion of writing a book on the peculiar situation of the human male.

Woman is shut up in a kitchen or in a boudoir, and astonishment is expressed that her horizon is limited. Her wings are clipped, and it is found deplorable that she cannot fly.

When we abolish the slavery of half of humanity, together with the whole system of hypocrisy it implies, then the "division" of humanity will reveal its genuine significance and the human couple will find its true form.

When women act like women, they are accused of being inferior. When women act like human beings, they are accused of behaving like men.

It was easier for me to think of a world without a creator than of a creator loaded with all the contradictions of the world.

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

One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.

Society cares about the individual only in so far as he is profitable. The young know this. Their anxiety as they enter in upon social life matches the anguish of the old as they are excluded from it.

Marriage is a career which brings about more benefits than many others.