If you live long enough, you'll see that every victory turns into a defeat.
Simone De BeauvoirRead
There's something tragic about you. Your feeling for the absolute. You were made to believe in God and spend your life in a convent.' There are too many with that vocation. God would have had to love only me.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the idea of existential purpose and the struggle between individual aspirations and societal expectations.
Simone De Beauvoir's quote delves into the tragedy of feeling deeply connected to the absolute, as it highlights the conflict between personal beliefs and the rigid structures imposed by society, such as religious vocations. It suggests that the individual's longing for a profound truth or connection may be at odds with the roles they are expected to fulfill, ultimately raising questions about the nature of faith and personal destiny.
Themes
TruthExistentialismBeliefFreedomSociety
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a discussion about existentialism and the search for personal identity.
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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