If you live long enough, you'll see that every victory turns into a defeat.
Simone De BeauvoirRead
There is only one solution if old age is not to be an absurd parody of our former life, and that is to go on pursuing ends that give our existence a meaning.
Interpretation
What this quote means
To avoid old age becoming meaningless, one must continue to seek purposeful goals.
Simone De Beauvoir suggests that aging should not lead to a life devoid of significance. Instead, to ensure that our later years are not a mere caricature of our past selves, we must actively engage in pursuits that imbue our existence with meaning, thereby transforming the experience of aging into one of continuous growth and purpose.
Themes
AgingMeaningPurposeLifeExistence
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the importance of lifelong learning, this quote could inspire the audience to seek new goals.
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)
Simone De BeauvoirRead
To catch a husband is an art; to hold him is a job.
Simone De BeauvoirRead
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.
Simone De BeauvoirRead
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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