If you live long enough, you'll see that every victory turns into a defeat.
Simone De BeauvoirRead
I am incapable of conceiving infinity, and yet I do not accept finity. I want this adventure that is the context of my life to go on without end.
Interpretation
The speaker grapples with the concepts of infinity and finity, expressing a desire for an endless journey in life.
This quote reflects the existential struggle of understanding the limits of existence while yearning for something boundless. Simone De Beauvoir highlights a paradox where, despite recognizing the finite nature of life, there remains an inherent desire for an infinite adventure, symbolizing the human spirit's quest for meaning and continuity in an otherwise limited reality.
In practice
During a graduation speech to inspire students about their future.
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 β¦ Eating, sleeping, cleaning β 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.
Trust only movement. Life happens at the level of events, not of words. Trust movement.
In republican governments, men are all equal; equal they are also in despotic governments: in the former, because they are everything; in the latter, because they are nothing.
Hypocrite reader my fellow my brother!
Character is revealed in the power to discern the suffering of other people when we ourselves are suffering; in the ability to detect the hunger of others when we are hungry; and in the power to reach out and extend compassion for the spiritual agony of others when we are in the midst of our own spiritual distress.
It's a true image, born of a false spectacle.
I never have felt that people should feel that they are better than others, simply because they just happen to possess a larger share of material items and monetary wealth than others less fortunate. I believe in sharing, assisting, and just lending a helping hand to people.
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