Simone de Beauvoir Quotes

“Girls are weighed down by restrictions, boys with demands - two equally harmful disciplines.”

“Girls are weighed down by restrictions, boys with demands - two equally harmful disciplines.”

“I’ve done everything I wanted to do, writing books, learning about things, but I’ve been swindled all the same because it’s never anything more.”

“I hadn't known Chancel very well, but ten days earlier I had seen him laughing with the others around the Christmas tree. Maybe Robert was right; the distance between the living and the dead really isn't very great. And yet, like myself, those future corpses who were drinking their coffee in silence appeared ashamed to be so alive.”

“To me it seems that too many young women of this time share the same creed. 'Live, laugh, love, be nothing but happy, experience everything, et cetera et cetera.' How monotonous, how useless this becomes. What about the honors of Joan of Arc, Beauvoir, Stowe, Xena, Princess Leia, or women that would truly fight for something other than just their own emotions?”

“The relation of woman to husband, of daughter to father, of sister to brother, is a relation of vassalage.”

“The little girl feels that her body is escaping her, that it is no longer the clear expression of her individuality: it becomes foreign to her; and at the same moment she is grasped by others as a thing: on the street, eyes follow her, her body is subject to comments; she would like to become invisible; she is afraid of becoming flesh and afraid to show her flesh.”

“Taking without being taken in the anguish of becoming prey is the dangerous game of adolescent feminine sexuality.”

“The relation of woman to husband, of of daughter to father, of sister to brother, is a relation of vassalage.”

“; the man who does not "understand" a woman is happy to replace his subjective deficiency with an objective resistance; instead of admitting his ignorance, he recognizes the presence of a mystery exterior to himself: here is an excuse that flatters his laziness and vanity at the same time.”

“The feminine body is expected to be flesh, but discreetly so;”