If you live long enough, you'll see that every victory turns into a defeat.
Simone De BeauvoirRead
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.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the impact of others' perceptions on self-confidence.
Simone De Beauvoir's quote explores the dynamics of self-confidence and perception in relationships. It suggests that an individual's lack of confidence often stems from the way they are viewed by others, particularly by someone significant in their life. If a person feels insecure, it may be influenced by the doubts expressed by those close to them, indicating the power of perception in shaping one's self-image.
In practice
During a team-building workshop, this quote can be used to discuss the importance of supportive perceptions in building confidence.
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.
Shame is something you'll find a lot of - particularly Catholic - girls feel about their bodies, about their sexuality, about their diet, about anything you like. Shame is the way you keep them down. That's the way to crush a girl.
That is life for a Saudi woman: wherever we go, whatever we achieve, we are the property of a man.
This was not my moment to be seeking romance and (as day follows night) to further complicate my already knotty life. This was my moment to look for the kind of healing and peace that can only come from solitude.
Your presence is the most precious gift you can give to another human being.
Usually when I go to a place for the first time, unless there's something historical or spectacular that nature has to offer, the first thing I like to do is see what's on the minds of the people.
When I was growing up as a young lesbian in the '50s, I looked in vain for books about my people. I did find some paperbacks with lurid covers in the local bus station, but they ended with the gay character's committing suicide, dying in a car crash, being sent to a mental hospital, or 'turning' heterosexual.
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