QuoteProject
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.
Simone De Beauvoir
ShareWTF𝕏

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

If you live long enough, you'll see that every victory turns into a defeat.
Simone De BeauvoirRead
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

Similar quotes

We are what we imagine. Our very existence consists in our imagination of ourselves. Our best destiny is to imagine, at least, completely, who and what, and that we are. The greatest tragedy that can befall us is to go unimagined.
N. Scott MomadayRead
Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.
George LucasRead
It forms a strong presumption against all supernatural and miraculous relations, that they are observed chiefly to abound among ignorant and barbarous nations; or if a civilized people has ever given admission to any of them, that people will be found to have received them from ignorant and barbarous ancestors.
David HumeRead
Sin, also for those who don't have faith, exists when one goes against one's conscience. To listen to and obey it means, in fact, to decide in face of what is perceived as good or evil. And on this decision pivots the goodness or malice of our action.
Pope FrancisRead
In our leisure we reveal what kind of people we are.
OvidRead
That which the fountain sends forth returns again to the fountain.
Henry Wadsworth LongfellowRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.