If you live long enough, you'll see that every victory turns into a defeat.
Simone De BeauvoirRead
My life was hurrying, racing tragically toward its end. And yet at the same time it was dripping so slowly, so very slowly now, hour by hour, minute by minute. One always has to wait until the sugar melts, the memory dies, the wound scars over, the sun sets, the unhappiness lifts and fades away.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects on the contrasting experiences of life speeding toward its end while moments stretch out painfully slow.
Simone De Beauvoir's quote explores the duality of time in life; while we perceive time as racing towards an inevitable conclusion, we simultaneously endure the slow passage of painful moments. The metaphor of waiting for the sugar to melt symbolizes the gradual healing of emotional wounds, suggesting that life's struggles are often prolonged but eventually subside, leading to healing and clarity over time.
Themes
TimeLifeHealingPainMemoryWound
In practice
Example use cases
This quote would be powerful in a eulogy to reflect on the complexity of life and death.
More from Simone De Beauvoir
All quotes →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)
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To catch a husband is an art; to hold him is a job.
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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.
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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.
Simone De BeauvoirRead
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.
Simone De BeauvoirRead
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