If you live long enough, you'll see that every victory turns into a defeat.
Simone De BeauvoirRead
I am awfully greedy; I want everything from life. I want to be a woman and to be a man, to have many friends and to have loneliness, to work much and write good books, to travel and enjoy myself, to be selfish and to be unselfish… You see, it is difficult to get all which I want. And then when I do not succeed I get mad with anger.
Interpretation
This quote expresses a deep yearning for a rich and fulfilling existence, encompassing both extremes of human experience.
Simone De Beauvoir's quote captures the complexity of human desires and the inherent contradictions within them. It illustrates a longing for a full spectrum of life's experiences, from companionship to solitude, selfishness to selflessness, and creativity to leisure. This struggle to attain a wide array of desires reflects the frustration and anger that can arise when one feels unable to achieve a well-rounded and satisfying life.
In practice
This quote can be used in a motivational speech about embracing life's complexities.
If you live long enough, you'll see that every victory turns into a defeat.
Two separate beings, in different circumstances, face to face in freedom and seeking justification of their existence through one another, will always live an adventure full of risk and promise." (p. 248)
To catch a husband is an art; to hold him is a job.
Sex pleasure in woman is a kind of magic spell; it demands complete abandon; if words or movements oppose the magic of caresses, the spell is broken.
As long as there have been men and they have lived, they have all felt this tragic ambiguity of their condition, but as long as there have been philosophers and they have thought, most of them have tried to mask it.
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.
won't you celebrate with me what i have shaped into a kind of life? i had no model. born in babylon both nonwhite and woman what did i see to be except myself? i made it up here on this bridge between starshine and clay, my one hand holding tight my other hand; come celebrate with me that everyday something has tried to kill me and has failed.
I say that is wine," Brett held up her glass. "We ought to toast something. 'Here's to royalty.'" "This wine is too good for toast-drinking, my dear. you don't want to mix emotions up with a wine like that. you lose the taste." Brett's glass was empty.
Don't just live the length of your life - live the width of it as well.
Life is too bitter already, without territories and wars and noble feuds
Life is about having a good time, and it was a good time. We did some things well and some things poorly, but that was always the case.
We do survive every moment, after all, except the last one.
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