If you live long enough, you'll see that every victory turns into a defeat.
Simone De BeauvoirRead
To be oneself, simply oneself, is so amazing and utterly unique an experience that it's hard to convince oneself so singular a thing happens to everybody.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Being authentic and true to oneself is a rare and profound experience.
This quote from Simone De Beauvoir highlights the importance of authenticity and individuality. It suggests that while everyone is unique and experiences their true selves, the realization of this singularity is often overlooked, making the experience of being oneself both extraordinary and surprisingly difficult to accept as a universal truth.
Themes
AuthenticityIndividualitySelfExperienceUniqueness
In practice
Example use cases
A speaker at a self-help seminar might use this quote to illustrate the value of embracing one's true self.
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)
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 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
The life of men and women is so cheap and property is so sacred. There are so many of us for one job it matters little if 146 of us are burned to death.
Rose SchneidermanRead
What is meant by reality? It would seem to be something very erratic, very undependable - now to be found in a dusty road, now in a scrap of newspaper in the street, now a daffodil in the sun. It lights up a group in a room and stamps some casual saying
Virginia WoolfRead
Oppression that is clearly inexorable and invincible does not give rise to revolt but to submission.
Simone WeilRead
To hurry through one's leisure is the most unbusiness-like of actions.
Gilbert K. ChestertonRead
In mountaineering, there is not only the activity, but the philosophy behind it. Some say a moral, but I am against that because all morality is dangerous.
Reinhold MessnerRead
We all yearn to fly. We are creatures of longing. We do not need to [physically fly] to be airborne. What I call the aerial instinct-the drive to transcend our present condition- is the defining characteristic of a human being. We are restless animals, eternal travelers who are forever in the process of becoming. Consciousness itself is a flight from the here and now to the beyond. Our reach always exceeds our grasp, which is what Heaven is for.
Sam KeenRead