If you live long enough, you'll see that every victory turns into a defeat.
Simone De BeauvoirRead
One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation and compassion.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Our lives are meaningful when we recognize and value the lives of others through love and compassion.
Simone De Beauvoir emphasizes the interconnectedness of human existence, positing that the value of one's own life is intrinsically linked to how one perceives and values the lives of others. By fostering love, friendship, indignation toward injustice, and compassion, we enrich our existence and affirm the worth of those around us, highlighting that a meaningful life is not lived in isolation but within a community of mutual respect and understanding.
Themes
ValueLifeLoveFriendshipCompassion
In practice
Example use cases
During a graduation speech, to highlight the importance of community.
More from Simone De Beauvoir
All quotes βTwo 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 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.
Simone De BeauvoirRead
Similar quotes
For where is the man that has incontestable evidence of the truth of all that he holds, or of the falsehood of all he condemns; or can say that he has examined to the bottom all his own, or other men's opinions? The necessity of believing without knowledge, nay often upon very slight grounds, in this fleeting state of action and blindness we are in, should make us more busy and careful to inform ourselves than constrain others.
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We have to remind ourselves constantly that we are not saviours. We are simply a tiny sign, among thousands of others, that love is possible, that the world is not condemned to a struggle between oppressors and oppressed, that class and racial warfare is not inevitable.
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I don't believe in astrology. The only stars I can blame for my failures are those that walk about the stage.
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If we say, 'I believe in Jesus,' but it doesn't affect the way we live, the answer is not that now we need to add hard work to our faith so much as that we haven't truly understood or believed in Jesus at all.
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When I was a young man, near the beginning of my life, I looked around with true mindfulness and saw that all things are subject to decay.
Gautama BuddhaRead