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 principle of contradiction establishes merely the agreement of concepts, but does not itself produce concepts.
Arthur SchopenhauerRead
We all want things we can't have. Being a decent human being is accepting that.
John FowlesRead
The idol of today pushes the hero of yesterday out of our recollection; and will, in turn, be supplanted by his successor of tomorrow.
Washington IrvingRead
War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement
James MadisonRead
As the sun shines both on the cedar and the smallest flower, so the Divine sun illumines each soul.
Therese Of LisieuxRead
If we are not even free anymore to decide something as basic as what we wish to eat or drink, how much freedom do we really have left?
Ron PaulRead