If you live long enough, you'll see that every victory turns into a defeat.
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects the monotonous and repetitive nature of housework, illustrating how it can feel like an endless, unfulfilling task.
Simone De Beauvoir's quote draws a parallel between housework and the myth of Sisyphus, a figure condemned to eternally roll a boulder uphill only for it to roll back down. In this context, she highlights the exhausting, never-ending cycle of household chores, which, despite the effort put into them, yield no lasting accomplishment or elevation in life. This describes a broader existential struggle where daily tasks can feel meaningless and contribute to a sense of stagnation and weariness.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the importance of recognizing the value of domestic work.
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)
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.
I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth - and truth rewarded me.
Similar quotes
Where we are as a nation is due to having an openness to the people of the world. It's incredibly important. I firmly believe that we cannot shut our borders to immigrants. I think a fair and just immigration policy is good for our country and good for our society.
Men, however distinguished by external accidents or intrinsick qualities, have all the same wants, the same pains, and, as far as the senses are consulted, the same pleasures.
My worthy friend, gray are all theories_x000D_ _x000D_ And green alone Life's golden tree.
Economic disasters or foolish wars are hardly guaranteed to bring about large-scale individual self-examination or renew the appeal of truly participatory democracy.
Fly, dotard, fly! With thy wise dreams and fables of the sky.
I can tell you that God is alive because I talked to him this morning.