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Insects Were Scurrying About In The Shade Cast By The Grass, And The Lawn Was A Huge Monotonous Forest Of Thousands Of Little Green Blades, All Equal, All Alike, Hiding The World From Each Other. Anguished, She Thought, "i Don't Want To Be Just Another Blade Of Grass."

-Simone De Beauvoir

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Insects Were Scurrying About

Simone De Beauvoir

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Insects Were Scurrying About In The Shade Cast By The Grass, And The Lawn Was A Huge Monotonous Forest Of Thousands Of Little Green Blades, All Equal, All Alike, Hiding The World From Each Other. Anguished, She Thought, "i Don't Want To Be Just Another Blade Of Grass."

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All Success Cloaks A Surrender

In A Way, Literature Is True Than Life,' He Said To Himself. 'on Paper, You Say Exactly And Completely What You Feel. How Easy It Is To Break Things Off On Paper! You Hate, You Shout, You Kill, You Commit Suicide; You Carry Things To The Very End. And That's Why It's False. But It's Damned Satisfying. In Life, You're Constantly Denying Yourself, And Others Are Always Contradicting You. On Paper, I Make Time Stand Still And I Impose My Convictions On The Whole World; They Become The Only Reality.

A Life Is Such A Strange Object, At One Moment Translucent, At Another Utterly Opaque, An Object I Make With My Own Hands, An Object Imposed On Me, An Object For Which The World Provides The Raw Material And Then Steals It From Me Again, Pulverized By Events, Scattered, Broken, Scored Yet Retaining Its Unity; How Heavy It Is And How Inconsistent: This Contradiction Breeds Many Misunderstandings.

You Have Never Had Any Confidence In Him. And If He Has No Confidence In Himself It Is Because He Sees Himself Through Your Eyes.

In Truth We Need To Change The Society Itself, Men As Well As Women, To Change Everything.

To Create A Language All Of A Piece Which Would Be A Women's Language, That I Find Quite Insane. There Does Not Exist A Mathematics Which Is Only A Women's Mathematics, Or A Feminine Science.

Work Almost Always Has A Double Aspect: It Is A Bondage, A Wearisome Drudgery; But It Is Also A Source Of Interest, A Steadying Element, A Factor That Helps To Integrate The Worker With Society. Retirement May Be Looked Upon Either As A Prolonged Holiday Or As A Rejection, A Being Thrown On To The Scrap-heap.

The Body Is Not A Thing, It Is A Situation: It Is Our Grasp On The World And Our Sketch Of Our Project

The Past Is Not A Peaceful Landscape Lying There Behind Me, A Country In Which I Can Stroll Wherever I Please, And Will Gradually Show Me All Its Secret Hills And Dales. As I Was Moving Forward, So It Was Crumbling. Most Of The Wreckage That Can Be Seen Is Colourless, Distorted, Frozen: Its Meaning Escapes Me... All That's Left Is A Skeleton. I Shall Never Find My Plans Again, My Hopes And Fears - I Shall Not Find Myself.

There Is No Such Thing As A Natural Death: Nothing That Happens To A Man Is Ever Natural, Since His Presence Calls The World Into Question. All Men Must Die: But For Every Man His Death Is An Accident And, Even If He Knows It And Consents To It, An Unjustifiable Violation.

Self-knowledge Is No Guarantee Of Happiness, But It Is On The Side Of Happiness And Can Supply The Courage To Fight For It.

Eating, Sleeping, Cleaning - The Years No Longer Rise Up Toward Heaven, They Lie Spread Out Ahead, Gray And Identical. The Battle Against Dust And Dirt Is Never Won. Washing, Ironing, Sweeping, Ferreting Out Rolls Of Lint From Under Wardrobes - All This Halting Of Decay Is Also The Denial Of Life; For Time Simultaneously Creates And Destroys, And Only Its Negative Aspect Concerns The Housekeeper.

Let Women Be Provided With Living Strength Of Their Own.

Every Time I Start On A New Book, I Am A Beginner Again. I Doubt Myself, I Grow Discouraged, All The Work Accomplished In The Past Is As Though It Never Was, My First Drafts Are So Shapeless That It Seems Impossible To Go On With The Attempt At All, Right Up Until The Moment - Always Imperceptible, There, Too, There Is A Break - When It Is Has Become Impossible Not To Finish It.

The Most Mediocre Of Males Feels Himself A Demigod As Compared With Women.

It Must Be Said In Addition That The Men With The Most Scrupulous Respect For Embryonic Life Are Also Those Who Are Most Zealous When It Comes To Condemning Adults To Death In War.

I Would Stand Transfixed Before The Windows Of The Confectioners' Shops, Fascinated By The Luminous Sparkle Of Candied Fruits, The Cloudy Lustre Of Jellies, The Kaleidoscope Inflorescence Of Acidulated Fruit Drops - Red, Green, Orange, Violet: I Coveted The Colours Themselves As Much As The Pleasure They Promised Me.

What Is An Adult? A Child Blown Up By Age.

As Soon As A Woman Re- Fuses To Be Perfectly Happy Doing Housework Eight Hours A Day, Society Has A Tendency To Want To Do A Lobotomy On Her.

But Women Do Not Say 'we', Except At Some Congress Of Feminists Or Similar Formal Demonstration; Men Say 'women', And Women Use The Same Word In Referring To Themselves.

Therefore The Misfortune Which Comes To Man As A Result Of The Fact That He Was A Child Is That His Freedom Was First Concealed From Him And That All His Life He Will Be Nostalgic For The Time When He Did Not Know It's Exigencies.

To Show Your True Ability Is Always, In A Sense, To Surpass The Limits Of Your Ability, To Go A Little Beyond Them: To Dare, To Seek, To Invent; It Is At Such A Moment That New Talents Are Revealed, Discovered, And Realized

I Could See No Reason For Being Sad. It´s Just That It Makes Me Unhappy Not To Feel Happy.

Françoise Could Not Help Taking A Surreptitious Glance At Xavière: She Gave A Start Of Amazement. Xavière Was No Longer Watching, Her Head Was Lowered. Françoise Barely Suppressed A Scream. The Girl Was Pressing The Lighted End Against Her Skin, A Bitter Smile Curling Her Lips. It Was An Intimate, Solitary Smile, Like That Of A Half-wit; The Voluptuous, Tortured Smile Of A Woman Possessed Of Some Secret Pleasure.

I Think That Feminism Permits Women To Speak Among Themselves, Instead Of Simply Being Resentful, Having Personal Complaints, Which Get Them Nowhere And Which Make Them Sick And Ill-tempered, Depressive And Poison The Lives Of Their Husbands And Children. It's Much Better To Arrive At A Collective Consciousness Of This Problem, Which Is Both A Kind Of Therapy And The Basis For A Struggle.

In 1949, I Believed That Social Progress, The Triumph Of The Proletariat, Socialism Would Lead To The Emancipation Of Women. But I Saw That Nothing Came Of It: First Of All, That Socialism Was Not Achieved Anywhere, And That In Certain Countries Which Called Themselves Socialist, The Situation Of Women Was No Better Than It Was In So-called Capitalist Countries.

She Offered Her Mouth To Him, As If Enchanted. A Persian Princess, A Little Indian, A Fox, A Morning Glory, A Lovely Wisteria--it Always Pleased Them When You Told Them They Looked Like Something, Like Something Else.

Can One Say That There Is A Way Of Crying Out, Of Speaking, Which Is Properly Feminine? Personally, I Don't Think So. In The End, I Find This Is Another Way Of Putting Women In A Kind Of Singularity, A Ghetto, Which Is Not What I Want. I Want Them To Be Singular And Universal At The Same Time.

No Existence Can Be Validly Fulfilled If It Is Limited To Itself.

The Time That One Gains Cannot Be Accumulated In A Storehouse; It Is Contradictory To Want To Save Up Existence, Which, The Fact Is, Exists Only By Being Spent And There Is A Good Case For Showing That Airplanes, Machines, The Telephone, And The Radio Do Not Make Men Of Today Happier Than Those Of Former Times.

Most Feminists In France Came To Feminism After '68 As A Result Of The Hypocrisy They Experienced In Leftist Movements. In These Movements, Where Everyone Believed There Was Going To Be True Equality, Fraternity Between Men And Women, And That Together They Were Going To Struggle Against This Rotten Society, Even There They Noticed That The Leftists, The Militants, Kept Them "in Their Place." Women Made The Coffee While The Others Did The Talking; They Were The Ones Who Typed The Letters.

Self-consciousness Is Not Knowledge But A Story One Tells About Oneself.

If I Were Proud Of Anything In My Life, It Would Be Of Our Love. I Feel We Have To Tell To Each Other As Many Things As We Can, So We Are Not Only Lovers, But The Closest Of Friends At The Same Time.

All The Idols Made By Man, However Terrifying They May Be, Are In Point Of Fact Subordinate To Him, And That Is Why He Will Always Have It In His Power To Destroy Them.

Many Things Would Be Changed For Americans If They Would Only Admit That There Is Ill-luck In This World And That Misfortune Is Not A Priori A Crime.

I Think That The Second Sex Will Seem An Old, Dated Book, After A While. But Nonetheless, A Book Which Will Have Made Its Contribution. At Least, I Hope So.

It Is Doubtless Impossible To Approach Any Human Problems With A Mind Free From Bias.

Americans Are Nature-lovers: But They Only Admit Of Nature Proofed And Corrected By Man.

We Belong To This Earth. Now I Can See The Truth ... I Love You On This Earth Of Ours. Love Me, Do!

...counselling Man To Treat Her As A Slave While Persuading Her That She Is A Queen.

The Ballot Box Is A Most Inadequate Mechanism Of Change.

The Most Sympathetic Of Men Never Fully Comprehend Woman's Concrete Situation.

That A Whole Part Of The Middle Class Detests Me... Is Utterly Normal. I Would Be Troubled If The Contrary Were True.

The Renewed Use Of Lobotomy Today Is Particularly Applicable To Women: Because They Do Routine Things, It Is Possible To Take Away Their Spirit Of Revolt, Of Debate, Of Criticism, And Still Leave Them Perfectly Capable Of Making Stews Or Washing Dishes. It's Terrible, This Tendency To Consider Women Something Dangerous To Society.

All Oppression Creates A State Of War.

If The Writer Is A Woman, Feminist Or Not, It Will Give The Language Something That It Would Not Have If It Had Been Used By A Man.

In Itself, Homosexuality Is As Limiting As Heterosexuality: The Ideal Should Be To Be Capable Of Loving A Woman Or A Man; Either, A Human Being, Without Feeling Fear, Restraint, Or Obligation.

Heterosexuality Is

But I Must Admit I Didn´t Like That Idea; Do The Same Thing As Everyone Else. Eating To Live, Living To Eat - That Had Been The Nightmare Of My Adolescence. If It Meant Going Back To That, If Would Be Just As Well To Turn On The Gas At Once. But I Suppose Everyone Thinks Of Things Like That: Let´s Turn On The Gas At Once. And You Don´t Turn It On.

A Darwinian Nation Of Economic Fitness Abhors Idleness, Dependence, Non-productivity.

There Is Only One Solution If Old Age Is Not To Be An Absurd Parody Of Our Former Life, And That Is To Go On Pursuing Ends That Give Our Existence A Meaning.

I Would Certainly Like To See Some Young Women Take Up Psychoanalysis Seriously And Reconstruct It From An Absolutely New Viewpoint.

Indeed, There Is Nothing More Arbitrary Than Intervening As A Stranger In A Destiny Which Is Not Ours.

It Is Perfectly Natural For The Future Woman To Feel Indignant At The Limitations Posed Upon Her By Her Sex. The Real Question Is Not Why She Should Reject Them: The Problem Is Rather To Understand Why She Accepts Them.

Perfectly Natural

... To Adapt One's Outlook To Another Person's Salvation Is The Surest And Quickest Way Of Losing Him.

I Wish That Every Human Life Might Be Pure Transparent Freedom.

I Am Incapable Of Conceiving Infinity, And Yet I Do Not Accept Finity.

I'm Not Against Mothers. I Am Against The Ideology Which Expects Every Woman To Have Children, And I'm Against The Circumstances Under Which Mothers Have To Have Their Children.

The Father's Life Is Surrounded By Mysterious Prestige: The Hours He Spends In The Home, The Room Where He Works, The Objects Around Him, His Occupations, His Habits, Have A Sacred Character. It Is He Who Feeds The Family, Is The One In Charge And The Head. Usually He Works Outside The Home, And It Is Through Him That The Household Communicates With The Rest Of The World: He Is The Embodiment Of This Adventurous, Immense, Difficult, And Marvelous World; He Is Transcendence, He Is God.

‎a Day In Which I Don't Write Leaves A Taste Of Ashes.

Since It Is The Other Within Us Who Is Old, It Is Natural That The Revelation Of Our Age Should Come To Us From Outside --from Others. We Do Not Accept It Willingly.

It Is In The Knowledge Of The Genuine Conditions Of Our Lives That We Must Draw Our Strength To Live And Our Reasons For Living.

One Can Not Start By Saying That Our Earthly Destiny Has Or Has Not Importance, For It Depends Upon Us To Give It Importance.

Ce N'est Gue' Re Que Dans Les Asiles Que Les Coquettes Gardent Avec Ente" Tement Une Foi Entie' Re En Des Regards Absents; Normalement, Elles Re Clament Des Te Moins. Women Fond Of Dress Are Hardly Ever Entirely Satisfied Not To Be Seen, Except Among The Insane; Usually They Want Witnesses.

As Long As The Family And The Myth Of The Family ... Have Not Been Destroyed, Women Will Still Be Oppressed.

It's Frightening To Think That You Mark Your Children Merely By Being Yourself. It Seems Unfair. You Can't Assume The Responsibility For Everything You Do --or Don't Do.

The Body Is The Instrument Of Our Hold On The World.

One Is Not Conceived A Lady, One Turns Into One.

Sometimes Speech Is No More Than A Device For Saying Nothing - And A Neater One Than Silence.

I Am Too Intelligent, Too Demanding, And Too Resourceful For Anyone To Be Able To Take Charge Of Me Entirely. No One Knows Me Or Loves Me Completely. I Have Only Myself

A Man Of The Right Doesn't Write In The Same Way As A Man Of The Left, You Can See That Right Away, Or A Woman Of The Right Or A Woman Of The Left.

Between Women Love Is Contemplative; Caresses Are Intended Less To Gain Possession Of The Other Than Gradually To Re-create The Self Through Her; Separateness Is Abolished, There Is No Struggle, No Victory, No Defeat; In Exact Reciprocity Each Is At Once Subject And Object, Sovereign And Slave; Duality Become Mutuality.

On The Day When It Will Be Possible For Woman To Love Not In Her Weakness But In Her Strength, Not To Escape Herself But To Find Herself, Not To Abase Herself But To Assert Herself--on That Day Love Will Become For Her, As For Man, A Source Of Life And Not Of Mortal Danger.

To Give Space When What One Most Yearns For Is Closeness, That Is Both The Great Test And Great Tragedy Of Love.

Love And Action Always Imply A Failure, But This Failure Must Not Keep Us From Loving And Acting. For We Have Not Only To Establish What Our Situation Is, We Have To Choose It In The Very Heart Of Its Ambiguity.

Art Is An Attempt To Integrate Evil.

I Admire Freud A Great Deal As A Person And Thinker. Despite Everything, I Find His Work Very, Very Rich, But I Think That For Women He Has Been Absolutely Disastrous. And Even More So, Everyone Who Came After Him.

To Catch A Husband Is An Art; To Hold Him Is A Job.

From The Very Beginning, Existentialism Defined Itself As A Philosophy Of Ambiguity.

If You Haven't Been Happy Very Young, You Can Still Be Happy Later On, But It's Much Harder. You Need More Luck.

The Role Of A Retired Person Is No Longer To Possess One.

If You Live Long Enough, You'll See That Every Victory Turns Into A Defeat.

Living By Proxy Is Always A Precarious Expedient.

Virginia Woolf Thought A Lot About Her Own Sex When She Wrote. In The Best Sense Of The Word, Her Writing Is Very Feminine, And By That I Mean That Women Are Supposed To Be Very Sensitive To All The Sensations Of Nature, Much More So Than Men, Much More Contemplative. It's This Quality That Marks Her Best Works.

Retirement May Be Looked Upon Either As A Prolonged Holiday Or As A Rejection, A Being Thrown On To The Scrap-heap.

Regardless Of The Staggering Dimensions Of The World About Us, The Density Of Our Ignorance, The Risks Of Catastrophes To Come, And Our Individual Weakness Within The Immense Collectivity, The Fact Remains That We Are Absolutely Free Today If We Choose To Will Our Existence In Its Finiteness, A Finiteness Which Is Open On The Infinite. And In Fact, Any Man Who Has Known Real Loves, Real Revolts, Real Desires, And Real Will Knows Quite Well That He Has No Need Of Any Outside Guarantee To Be Sure Of His Goals; Their Certitude Comes From His Own Drive.

For Years I Thought My Work Still Lay Ahead, And Now I Find It Is Behind Me: There Was No Moment When It Took Place.

One Is Not Born A Genius, One Becomes A Genius; And The Feminine Situation Has Up To The Present Rendered This Becoming Practically Impossible.

Ah, If Only There Were Two Of Me, She Thought, One Who Spoke And The Other Who Listened, One Who Lived And One Who Watched, How I Would Love Myself! I Would Envy No One.

Women Aren't More Easily Swayed By Fascism Than Men, But I Believe That Their Situation Makes Them In Effect More Slavish Than Men.

In Order To Be An Artist, One Must Be Deeply Rooted In The Society.

Oppression Tries To Defend Itself By Its Utility. But We Have Seen That It Is One Of The Lies Of The Serious Mind To Attempt To Give The Word "useful" An Absolute Meaning; Nothing Is Useful If It Is Not Useful To Man; Nothing Is Useful To Man If The Latter Is Not In A Position To Define His Own Ends And Values, If He Is Not Free.

On Ne Na|"t Pas Femme: On Le Devient. One Is Not Born A Woman: One Becomes A Woman.

The State Of Emotional Intoxication Allows One To Grasp Existence In One's Self And In The Other, As Both Subjectivity And Passivity. The Two Partners Merge In This Ambiguous Unity; Each One Is Freed Of His Own Presence And Achieves Immediate Communication With The Other.

When Women Act Like Women, They Are Accused Of Being Inferior. When Women Act Like Human Beings, They Are Accused Of Behaving Like Men.

We Always Come Back To The Same Vicious Circle - An Extreme Degree Of Material Or Intellectual Poverty Does Away With The Means Of Alleviating It.

Every Time A Man Dies, A Child Dies Too, And An Adolescent And A Young Man As Well; Everyone Weeps For The One Who Was Dear To Him.

A Foreign Country Can Best Be Understood Through Its Literature.

Defending The Truth Is Not Something One Does Out Of A Sense Of Duty Or To Allay Guilt Complexes, But Is A Reward In Itself.

It's True That What You Find In New York Is Something Other Than America. Only Small Towns And Small Countries Are Self-satisfied; A Real Capital Goes Beyond Its Borders.

I Like Everyone Who Tries To Show That Madness Is, In Large Part, Conditioned By Society And Particularly By The Family, And Therefore, Strongly Affects Women.

The Earthly Meaning Of Eternal Life Was Death, And She Refused To Die.

I Was Made For Another Planet Altogether. I Mistook The Way.

I Was Very Fond Of Lagneau’s Phrase: “i Have No Comfort But In My Absolute Despair.

The Fact That We Are Human Beings Is Infinitely More Important Than All The Peculiarities That Distinguish Human Beings From One Another.

To Be Moral Is To Discover Fundamentally Ones Own Being.

She Was Trying To Get Rid Of A Religious Hangover.

The Younger And Healthier A Woman Is And The More Her New And Glossy Body Seems Destined For Eternal Freshness, The Less Useful Is Artifice; But The Carnal Weakness Of This Prey That Man Takes And Its Ominous Deterioration Always Have To Be Hidden From Him...in Any Case, The More Traits And Proportions Of A Woman Seem Contrived, The More She Delighted The Heart Of Man Because She Seemed To Escape The Metamorphosis Of Natural Things. The Result Is This Strange Paradox That By Desiring To Grasp Nature, But Transfigured, In Woman, Man Destines Her To Artifice.

What Is Very Troubling Is That People Who Have Tried To Write Literature, Even, For Example, Proletarian Writers, Seem To Write Within The Norms Of The Dominant Class.

Why One Man Rather Than Another? It Was Odd. You Find Yourself Involved With A Fellow For Life Just Because He Was The One That You Met When You Were Nineteen.

Finding Yourself

I Willingly Trust Myself To Chance. I Let My Thoughts Wander, I Digress, Not Only Sitting At My Work, But All Day Long, All Night Even. It Often Happens That A Sentence Suddenly Runs Through My Head Before I Go To Bed, Or When I Am Unable To Sleep, And I Get Up Again And Write It Down.

The Individual Is Defined Only By His Relationship To The World And To Other Individuals; He Exists Only By Transcending Himself, And His Freedom Can Be Achieved Only Through The Freedom Of Others. He Justifies His Existence By A Movement Which, Like Freedom, Springs From His Heart But Which Leads Outside Of Himself.

It's Important That You Think Of Your Relationship With The World And The Way You Can Express That World And That You Not Be Stopped If It Scandalizes Or Embarrasses; But You Must Not Look For Scandal Or For The Avant-garde As A Thing In Itself.

Obviously, Everything Has Always Been Defined By The Dominant Ideology. But The Dominant Ideology Has Been Able To Accept Women's Literature As Well As Men's Literature. I Would Say That Women Have Been Hindered From Creating For A Variety Of Reasons, As Virginia Woolf So Admirably Explained In A Room Of One's Own. When They Have Created, On The Whole They Have Been Recognized. In Literature It Hasn't Been Nearly As Oppressive As In, Say, Painting, Where Even The Existence Of So Many Women Painters Has Always Been Denied.

It Was Easier For Me To Think Of A World Without A Creator Than Of A Creator Loaded With All The Contradictions Of The World.

Cooking Is Revolution And Creation.

Tonight, Once More, Life Sinks Its Teeth Into My Heart.

It Is A Difficult Matter For Man To Realize The Extreme Importance Of Social Discriminations Which Seem Outwardly Insignificant But Which Produce In Woman Moral And Intellectual Effects So Profound That They Appear To Spring From Her Original Nature.

To Will Freedom And To Will To Disclose Being Are One And The Same Choice; Hence, Freedom Takes A Positive And Constructive Step Which Causes Being To Pass To Existence In A Movement Which Is Constantly Surpassed.

Oppression Tries To Defend Itself By Its Utility.

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 Never Thought Of Myself As Being In The Avant-garde. I Said What I Had To Say, As I Was Able To Say It.

Society, Being Codified By Man, Decrees That Woman Is Inferior; She Can Do Away With This Inferiority Only By Destroying The Male's Superiority.

When I Was A Child, When I Was An Adolescent, Books Saved Me From Despair: That Convinced Me That Culture Was The Highest Of Values[...].

I Think That Freud Understood Absolutely Nothing About Women - As He Himself Said.

At The Moment Of Their Emancipation, Women Have A Need To Write Their Own Histories.

Buying Is A Profound Pleasure.

Christianity Gave Eroticism Its Savor Of Sin And Legend When It Endowed The Human Female With A Soul.

Hegel Held That The Two Sexes Were Of Necessity Different, The One Being Active And The Other Passive, And Of Course The Female Would Be The Passive One.

If You Are Writing Something In Which You Are Really Involved, You Don't Even Need To Think About It Any Longer. The Situation Itself Demands Your Total Commitment As An Individual, Just As In Your Political Commitments.

I Am Not At All For A Feminism Which Is Entirely Separatist, Which Would Say, "this Domain Is Purely For Women." I Don't Believe That At All.

The American Woman's Inequality With Men Is Proved By Her Defiant Attitude.

The Women Of Today Are In A Fair Way To Dethrone The Myth Of Femininity; They Are Beginning To Affirm Their Independence In Concrete Ways; But They Do Not Easily Succeed In Living Completely The Life Of A Human Being.

A Writer Is Hoisted Up Onto A Pedestal Only To Scrutinize Him More Closely And Conclude That It Was A Mistake To Put Him Up There In The First Place.

I Realized That Even If We Went On Talking Till Judgment Day, I Would Still Find The Time All Too Short.

It's Only Arrogance If You're Wrong.

Society Cares For The Individual Only So Far As He Is Profitable.

Woman Is Shut Up In A Kitchen Or In A Boudoir, And Astonishment Is Expressed That Her Horizon Is Limited. Her Wings Are Clipped, And It Is Found Deplorable That She Cannot Fly.

I Think That Where You Go Wrong Is That You Imagine That Your Reasons For Living Ought To Fall On You, Ready-made From Heaven, Whereas We Have To Find Them For Ourselves.

Jealousy Is Not Contemptible, Real Love Has A Beak And Claws.

It Is Not In Giving Life But In Risking Life That Man Is Raised Above The Animal; That Is Why Superiority Has Been Accorded In Humanity Not To The Sex That Brings Forth But To That Which Kills.

…but All Day Long I Would Be Training Myself To Think, To Understand, To Criticize, To Know Myself; I Was Seeking For The Absolute Truth: This Preoccupation Did Not Exactly Encourage Polite Conversation.

Picasso Never Thought Of Himself As Avant-garde. I Just Find It A Bad Way To Think Of Yourself.

Feminism Is One Way Of Attacking Society As It Now Exists.

Society Cares About The Individual Only In So Far As He Is Profitable. The Young Know This. Their Anxiety As They Enter In Upon Social Life Matches The Anguish Of The Old As They Are Excluded From It.

However Gifted An Individual Is At The Outset, If His Or Her Talents Cannot Be Developed Because Of His Or Her Social Condition, Because Of The Surrounding Circumstances, These Talents Will Be Still-born.

Women Have Been Burnt As Witches Simply Because They Were Beautiful.

We Can Reorient Science - For Example, A Kind Of Medicine Much More Directed Toward The Enormous Number Of Women's Health Problems Which Are Neglected Now. But The Original Givens Of This Science Are The Same For Men And For Women. Women Simply Have To Steal The Instrument; They Don't Have To Break It, Or Try, A Priori, To Make Of It Something Totally Different. Steal It And Use It For Their Own Good.

I Think It's Wrong To Write In A Totally Esoteric Language When You Want To Talk About Things Which Interest A Multitude Of Women.

Writing ... Is A Profession That Can Only Be Learned By Writing.

The Sahara Was A Spectacle As Alive As The Sea. The Tints Of The Dunes Changed According To The Time Of Day And The Angle Of The Light: Golden As Apricots From Far Off, When We Drove Close To Them They Turned To Freshly Made Butter; Behind Us They Grew Pink; From Sand To Rock, The Materials Of Which The Desert Was Made Varied As Much As Its Tints.

For Me, The Problem Of Time Is Linked Up With That Of Death, With The Thought That We Inevitably Draw Closer And Closer To It, With The Horror Of Decay.

This Has Always Been A Man's World, And None Of The Reasons That Have Been Offered In Explanation Have Seemed Adequate.

There Are Cases Where The Slave Does Not Know His Servitude And Where It Is Necessary To Bring The Seed Of His Liberation To Him From The Outside: His Submission Is Not Enough To Justify The Tyranny Which Is Imposed Upon Him.

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.

Today, However, We Are Having A Hard Time Living Because We Are So Bent On Outwitting Death.

What Would Prince Charming Have For Occupation If He Had Not To Awaken The Sleeping Beauty?

Literature In France Seems To Be Undergoing A Crisis Now, And Nothing Comes Immediately To Mind.

Live With No Time-out.

There Is No Justification For Present Existence Other Than Its Expansion Into An Indefinitely Open Future.

Because We Are Separated Everything Separates Us, Even Our Efforts To Join Each Other.

Old Age Is Life's Parody.

To Make Oneself An Object, To Make Oneself Passive, Is A Very Different Thing From Being A Passive Object.

There Is A Poetry In Making Preserves; The Housewife Has Caught Duration In The Snare Of Sugar, She Has Enclosed Life In Jars.

It Is Not The Inferiority Of Women That Has Caused Their Historical Insignificance; It Is Rather Their Historical Insignificance That Has Doomed Them To Inferiority.

She Was Ready To Deny The Existence Of Space And Time Rather Than Admit That Love Might Not Be Eternal.

La Femme?sait Que Quand On La Regarde On Ne La Distingue Pas De Son Apparence: Elle Est Juge E, Respecte E, De Sire E A' Travers Sa Toilette. Woman?knows That When She Is Looked At She Is Not Considered Apart From Her Appearance: She Is Judged, Respected, Desired, By And Through Her Toilette.

My Worst Mistake Has Been Not Grasping That Time Goes By. It Was Going By And There I Was, Set In The Attitude Of The Ideal Wife Of An Ideal Husband. Instead Of Bringing Our Sexual Relationship To Life Again I Brooded Happily Over Memories Of Our Former Nights Together.

Fathers Never Have Exactly The Daughters They Want Because They Invent A Notion A Them That The Daughters Have To Conform To.

That's What I Consider True Generosity. You Give Your All, And Yet You Always Feel As If It Costs You Nothing.

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 Nearer I Come To The End Of My Days, The More I Am Enabled To See That Strange Thing, A Life, And To See It Whole.

Women's Mutual Understanding Comes From The Fact That They Identify Themselves With Each Other; But For The Same Reason Each Is Against The Others.

Sign Of Old Age: Distress At All Leave-takings, All Separations. And The Sadness Of Memories, Because I'm Aware They're Condemned To Death.

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.

When An Individual (or A Group Of Individuals) Is Kept In A Situation Of Inferiority, The Fact Is That He Is Inferior.

On The Evenings When My Parents Held Parties, The Drawing-room Mirrors Multiplied To Infinity The Scintillations Of A Crystal Chandelier. Mama Would Take Her Seat At The Grand Piano To Accompany A Lady Dressed In A Cloud Of Tulle Who Played The Violin And A Cousin Who Performed On A Cello. I Would Crack Between My Teeth The Candied Shell Of An Artificial Fruit, And A Burst Of Light Would Illuminate My Palate With A Taste Of Blackcurrant Or Pineapple: All The Colours, All The Lights Were Mine, The Gauzy Scarves, The Diamonds, The Laces; I Held The Whole Party In My Mouth.

The Curse Which Lies Upon Marriage Is That Too Often The Individuals Are Joined In Their Weakness Rather Than In Their Strength - Each Asking From The Other Instead Of Finding Pleasure In Giving.

It Is So Difficult Not To Become Vain About One's Own Good Luck.

One Is Not Born, But Rather Becomes, A Woman. No Biological, Psychological, Or Economic Fate Determines The Figure That The Human Female Presents In Society; It Is Civilization As A Whole That Produces This Creature, Intermediate Between Male And Eunuch, Which Is Described As Feminine.

The Notion Of Ambiguity Must Not Be Confused With That Of Absurdity. To Declare That Existence Is Absurd Is To Deny That It Can Ever Be Given A Meaning; To Say That It Is Ambiguous Is To Assert That Its Meaning Is Never Fixed, That It Must Be Constantly Won. Absurdity Challenges Every Ethics; But Also The Finished Rationalization Of The Real Would Leave No Room For Ethics; It Is Because Man's Condition Is Ambiguous That He Seeks, Through Failure And Outrageousness, To Save His Existence.

Marriage Is A Career Which Brings About More Benefits Than Many Others.

All The Opportunities You Let Slip By! The Idea, The Inspiration Just Doesn´t Come Fast Enough. Instead Of Being Open, You´re Closed Up Tight. That´s The Worst Sin Of All - The Sin Of Omission.

People Seem To Think That If You Keep Your Head Empty You Automatically Fill Your Balls.

I Should Like To Be The Landscape Which I Am Contemplating, I Should Like This Sky, This Quiet Water To Think Themselves Within Me, That It Might Be I Whom They Express In Flesh And Bone, And I Remain At A Distance. But It Is Also By This Distance That The Sky And The Water Exist Before Me. My Contemplation Is An Excruciation Only Because It Is Also A Joy. I Can Not Appropriate The Snow Field Where I Slide. It Remains Foreign, Forbidden, But I Take Delight In This Very Effort Toward An Impossible Possession. I Experience It As A Triumph, Not As A Defeat.

Whether You Think Of It As Heavenly Or As Earthly, If You Love Life Immortality Is No Consolation For Death.

This Is Certainly A Very Tricky Point: How To Ally Yourself To Other Leftist Forces Without Losing Your Feminist Specificity.

I Went To Get A Detective Story. You Have To Kill Time. But Time Will Kill Me Too - And There´s The True, Preestablished Balance.

If You Try Consciously To Be Avant-garde, It's A Little Dangerous, Like The Present State Of Modern Painting, Where Dealers Try To Be Avant-garde, And Under This Pretext, Painters Take Some Old Scraps And Call It Avant-garde.

I've Always Been Keenly Aware Of The Passing Of Time. I've Always Thought That I Was Old. Even When I Was Twelve, I Thought It Was Awful To Be Thirty. I Felt That Something Was Lost. At The Same Time, I Was Aware Of What I Could Gain, And Certain Periods Of My Life Have Taught Me A Great Deal. But, In Spite Of Everything, I've Always Been Haunted By The Passing Of Time And By The Fact That Death Keeps Closing In On Us.

You Can't Address Yourself To Women By Speaking A Language Which No Average Woman Will Understand. In My Opinion, It's Wrong.

To Be A Woman, If Not A Defect, Is At Least A Peculiarity.

In The Face Of An Obstacle Which Is Impossible To Overcome, Stubbornness Is Stupid.

There Is The Problem Of Unpaid Labor, Such As Housework, Which Represents Millions And Millions Of Unsalaried Work Hours And On Which Masculine Society Is Firmly Based. To Put An End To This Would Be To Send The Present-day Capitalist System Flying In A Single Blow. Only We Can't Do It By Ourselves; There Have To Be Other Kinds Of Attacks On The System. So A Certain Alliance With Revolutionary Systems Is Necessary, Even Masculine Ones.

I Believe That We Must Use Language. If It Is Used In A Feminist Perspective, With A Feminist Sensibility, Language Will Find Itself Changed In A Feminist Manner. It Will Nonetheless Be The Language. You Can't Not Use This Universal Instrument; You Can't Create An Artificial Language, In My Opinion. But Naturally, Each Writer Must Use It In His/her Own Way.

Given Masculine Norms, It Is Clear That Women Are More Likely To Be Considered Crazy - I'm Not Saying To Be Crazy.

Feminism Is A Revolutionary Movement Which Is Different From The Class Struggle Movement, The Proletarian Movement, But Which Is A Movement Which Must Be Leftist. By That I Mean At The Extreme Left, A Movement Working To Overthrow The Whole Society.

Be Loved, Be Admired, Be Necessary; Be Somebody.

Existence Must Be Asserted In The Present If One Does Not Want All Life To Be Defined As An Escape Toward Nothingness.

I Cannot Be Angry At God, In Whom I Do Not Believe.

Positive Atheism

There Was A Time, In The Nineteenth Century, For Example, When Women Spoke Mostly About The House, Children, Birth, And So Forth, Because It Was Their Domain. That's Changing A Little, Now.

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