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Retirement Revives The Sorrow Of Parting, The Feeling Of Abandonment, Solitude And Uselessness That Is Caused By The Loss Of Some Beloved Person.
-Simone De Beauvoir
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Retirement Revives The Sorrow

Simone De Beauvoir
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Retirement Revives The Sorrow Of Parting, The Feeling Of Abandonment, Solitude And Uselessness That Is Caused By The Loss Of Some Beloved Person.

Understanding the Quote: "retirement revives the sorrow of parting, the feeling of abandonment, solitude and..."

This quote by Simone De Beauvoir reflects deeply on the theme of retirement. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Retirement, Loss, Solitude, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Simone de Beauvoir interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Simone De Beauvoir

Simone De Beauvoir is celebrated for insightful thoughts on retirement and loss. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

Views: 36479
Topic
Retirement
Loss
Solitude
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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.
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Man Is A Talking Animal And He Will Always Let Himself Be Swayed By The Power Of The Word. Machines Won't Change Human Nature.
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Literature In France Seems To Be Undergoing A Crisis Now, And Nothing Comes Immediately To Mind.
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You Can't Define The Future. And In My Opinion, You Can't Define The Avant-garde.
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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.
Men
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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.
Choices
Movement
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Americans Are Nature-lovers: But They Only Admit Of Nature Proofed And Corrected By Man.
Nature
Men
United States
Justice Can Never Be Done In The Midst Of Injustice.
Justice
Done
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A Man Would Never Get The Notion Of Writing A Book On The Peculiar Situation Of The Human Male.
Book
Writing
Men
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.
Morning
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It Is Not Mere Chance That Makes Families Speak Of A Child Who Is 'extraordinary For His Age' And Also Of An Old Man Who Is 'extraordinary For His Age'; The Extraordinariness Lies In Their Behaving Like Human Beings When They Are Either Not Yet Or No Longer Men.
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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.
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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.
Retirement
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Self-consciousness Is Not Knowledge But A Story One Tells About Oneself.
Self
Stories
Consciousness
Habit Has A Kind Of Poetry.
Kind
Habit
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.
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Would Be
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.
Understanding
Facts
Reason
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.
Men
Medicine
Numbers
She Was Not To Look Beyond Herself For The Meaning Of Her Life.
Looks
A Freedom Which Is Interested Only In Denying Freedom Must Be Denied. And It Is Not True That The Recognition Of The Freedom Of Others Limits My Own Freedom: To Be Free Is Not To Have The Power To Do Anything You Like; It Is To Be Able To Surpass The Given Toward An Open Future; The Existence Of Others As A Freedom Defines My Situation And Is Even The Condition Of My Own Freedom. I Am Oppressed If I Am Thrown Into Prison, But Not If I Am Kept From Throwing My Neighbor Into Prison.
Able
Limits
Recognition
The Innumerable Conflicts That Set Men And Women Against One Another Come From The Fact That Neither Is Prepared To Assume All The Consequences Of This Situation Which The One Has Offered And The Other Accepted.
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Assuming
To Give Space When What One Most Yearns For Is Closeness, That Is Both The Great Test And Great Tragedy Of Love.
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Giving
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She Was Ready To Deny The Existence Of Space And Time Rather Than Admit That Love Might Not Be Eternal.
Love
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Retirement May Be Looked Upon Either As A Prolonged Holiday Or As A Rejection, A Being Thrown On To The Scrap-heap.
Teacher
Retirement
Holiday
The Body Is Not A Thing, It Is A Situation: It Is Our Grasp On The World And Our Sketch Of Our Project
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Body
Projects
No One Is More Arrogant Toward Women, More Aggressive Or Scornful, Than The Man Who Is Anxious About His Virility.
Men
Arrogance
Arrogant
Representation Of The World, Like The World Itself, Is The Work Of Men; They Describe It From Their Own Point Of View, Which They Confuse With The Absolute Truth.
Inspiring
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Art Is An Attempt To Integrate Evil.
Art
Evil
Integrating
Science Condemns Itself To Failure When, Yielding To The Infatuation Of The Serious, It Aspires To Attain Being, To Contain It, And To Possess It; But It Finds Its Truth If It Considers Itself As A Free Engagement Of Thought In The Given, Aiming, At Each Discovery, Not At Fusion With The Thing, But At The Possibility Of New Discoveries; What The Mind Then Projects Is The Concrete Accomplishment Of Its Freedom.
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Society Turns Away From The Aged Worker As Though He Belonged To Another Species. That Is Why The Whole Question Is Buried In A Conspiracy Of Silence. Old Age Exposes The Failure Of Our Entire Civilization.
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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.
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I Am Incapable Of Conceiving Infinity, And Yet I Do Not Accept Finity. I Want This Adventure That Is The Context Of My Life To Go On Without End.
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The Emancipation Of Women Must Be The Work Of Women Themselves, Independent Of The Class Struggle.
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…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.
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--there You Are. The Sight Of The Changing World Is Miraculous And Heartbreaking, Both At The Same Time. --but So It Is For Me Too. The Heartbreaking Side Of Growing Old Is Not In The Things Around One But In Oneself.
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To Be Oneself, Simply Oneself, Is So Amazing And Utterly Unique An Experience That It's Hard To Convince Oneself So Singular A Thing Happens To Everybody.
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Anger Or Revolt That Does Not Get Into The Muscles Remains A Figment Of The Imagination.
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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.
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One Is Not Born, But Rather Becomes, A Woman.
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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.
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When Goya Was 80 He Drew An Ancient Man Propped On Two Sticks, With A Great Mass Of White Hair And Beard All Over His Face, And The Inscription, "i Am Still Learning."
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There Is Not A Single Line In This Diary That Does Not Call For A Correction Or A Denial...yes: Throughout These Pages I Meant What I Was Writing And I Meant The Opposite; Reading Them Again I Feel Completely Lost...i Was Lying To Myself. How I Lied To Myself!
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Reading
Writing
There Are Topics Which Are Common To Men And Women. I Think That If A Woman Speaks Of Oppression, Of Misery, She Will Speak Of It In Exactly The Same Way As A Man. But If She Speaks Of Her Own Personal Problems As A Woman, She Will Obviously Speak In Another Way.
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She Was Trying To Get Rid Of A Religious Hangover.
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Women
Hangover
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.
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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.
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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.
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Philosopher
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.
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The Fact That We Are Human Beings Is Infinitely More Important Than All The Peculiarities That Distinguish Human Beings From One Another.
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If You Live Long Enough, You'll See That Every Victory Turns Into A Defeat.
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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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To Lose Confidence In One’s Body Is To Lose Confidence In Oneself.
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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)
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I Was Struck By The Absence, Even Among Very Young Boys And Girls, Of Any Interior Motivation; They Were Incapable Of Thinking, Of Inventing, Of Imagining, Of Choosing, Of Deciding For Themselves; This Incapacity Was Expressed By Their Conformism; In Every Domain Of Life They Employed Only The Abstract Measure Of Money, Because They Were Unable To Trust To Their Own Judgment.
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Legislators, Priests, Philosophers, Writers, Ans Scientists Have Striven To Show That The Subordinate Position Of Woman Is Willed In Heaven And Advantageous On Earth.
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Earth
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In Every Society The Artist Or Writer Remains An Outsider.
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Outsiders
Remains
Living By Proxy Is Always A Precarious Expedient.
Proxy
Precarious
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.
Men
Giving
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Men
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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.
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Home
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Feminism Is One Way Of Attacking Society As It Now Exists.
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Way
Attacking
At The Moment Of Their Emancipation, Women Have A Need To Write Their Own Histories.
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Buying Is A Profound Pleasure.
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Buying
What An Odd Thing A Diary Is: The Things You Omit Are More Important Than Those You Put In.
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The Day Had Been Spent In The Expectation Of These Hours, And Now They Were Crumbling Away, Becoming, In Their Turn, Another Period Of Expectancy...it Was A Journey Without End, Leading To An Indefinite Future, Eternally Shifting Just As She Was Reaching The Present.
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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.
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That's What I Consider True Generosity. You Give Your All, And Yet You Always Feel As If It Costs You Nothing.
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From One Minute To The Next The Present Is Merely An Honorary Past. It Must Be Filled Unceasingly Anew To Dissemble The Curse It Carries Within Itself; That Is Why Americans Like Speed, Alcohol, Thriller Films And Any Sensational News: The Demand For New Things, And Ever Newer Things, Is Feverish Since Nowhere Will They Rest.
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Alcohol
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She Would Never Change, But One Day At The Touch Of A Fingertip She Would Fall To Dust.
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Dust
One Day
Words Have To Murder Reality Before They Can Hold It Captive.
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Murder
Captives
You Can't Assume The Responsibility For Everything You Do Or Don't Do.
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Assuming
Assumption
The American Woman's Inequality With Men Is Proved By Her Defiant Attitude.
Attitude
Women
Inequality
Old Age Is Better For Women Than For Men. First Of All, They Have Less Far To Fall, Since Their Lives Are More Mediocre Than Those Of Most Men.
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Men
Age
One Is Not Conceived A Lady, One Turns Into One.
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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.
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Mean
Class
The Ballot Box Is A Most Inadequate Mechanism Of Change.
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Ballots
Mechanism
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.
Lying
Sleep
Dust
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.
Time
Twelve
Awful
To Refuse Everything, To Say, Even When There Is Something Which Really Should Be Done, "ah, That's No Longer Feminist," Is A Pessimistic, Even Masochistic Tendency In Women, The Result Of Having Been Habituated To Inertia, To Pessimism.
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Done
Pessimistic
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.
Trying
Madness
Shows
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.
Fall
Thinking
Heaven
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.
Mother
Children
Circumstances
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.
Writing
Men
Way
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.
Life
Death
Sex
A Couple Who Go On Living Together Merely Because That Was How They Began, Without Any Other Reason: Was That What We Were Turning Into?
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Together
Goes On
All Oppression Creates A State Of War.
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Historical
Oppression
Anyway I Know Only Too Well That All Life Is Nothing But A Brief Reprieve From Death.
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Wells
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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.
Children
Husband
Struggle
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.
Suicide
Hate
Reality
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.
Children
Men
Firsts
The Individuals Who Seem To Us Most Outstanding, Who Are Honored With The Name Of Genius, Are Those Who Have Proposed To Enact The Fate Of All Humanity In Their Personal Existences.
Fate
Names
Humanity
Today, However, We Are Having A Hard Time Living Because We Are So Bent On Outwitting Death.
Hard Times
Today
Existentialism
Why Does One Exist? That's Not My Problem. One Does Exist. The Thing To Do Is To Take No Notice But Go At It On The Run And To Keep On Going Right On Until You Die.
Running
Doe
Problem
The Body Is The Instrument Of Our Hold On The World.
World
Body
Instruments
He Formed His Sentences Hesitantly And Then Threw Them At Me With Such Force That I Felt As If I Were Receiving A Present Each Time
Receiving
Force
Sentences
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[...].
Children
Book
Despair
I Could See No Reason For Being Sad. It´s Just That It Makes Me Unhappy Not To Feel Happy.
Being Sad
Unhappy
Reason
It's Not A Very Big Step From Contentment To Complacency.
Contentment
Complacency
Steps
To Be Moral Is To Discover Fundamentally Ones Own Being.
Moral
There Are Moments When You Have To Write Certain Things And You Don't Have To Think Of Your Sex. If You Are Writing About The Population Of The Thirteenth District In Paris, Even If You Are Writing On The Women In The Thirteenth District, There's No Need To Consider Your Sex.
Sex
Writing
Thinking
Truthfully Speaking, Women Are Dangerous, Even Those Who Aren't Feminists, Because There Has Always Been A Women's Revolt. Only It Has Usually Translated Itself Into Solitary, Individualist, Disagreeable Manifestations - The Whole History Of The Taming Of The Shrew, The Woman-shrew. They Weren't Shrews Without Cause.
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Taming
Shrews
Literature Is Always What The Dominant Ideology Recognizes As Literature.
Literature
Ideology
Dominant
What Is An Adult? A Child Blown Up By Age.
Birthday
Time
Children
People Seem To Think That If You Keep Your Head Empty You Automatically Fill Your Balls.
Thinking
People
Balls
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.
Time
Decay
Problem
If Her Functioning As A Female Is Not Enough To Define Woman, If We Decline Also To Explain Her Through "the Eternal Feminine," And If Nevertheless We Admit, Provisionally, That Women Do Exist, Then We Must Face The Question: What Is A Woman?
Female
Faces
Eternity
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.
Country
Progress
Saws
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.
Thinking
Rich
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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.
Coffee
Struggle
Men
In Truth We Need To Change The Society Itself, Men As Well As Women, To Change Everything.
Men
Needs
Need A Change
Whatever The Country, Capitalist Or Socialist, Man Was Everywhere Crushed By Technology, Made A Stranger To His Own Work, Imprisoned, Forced Into Stupidity.
Country
Technology
Men
‎a Day In Which I Don't Write Leaves A Taste Of Ashes.
Writing
Ashes
Taste
Weakness' Is Weakness Only In Light Of The Aims Man Sets For Himself, The Instruments At His Disposal And The Laws He Imposes.
Men
Light
Law
Retirement Revives The Sorrow Of Parting, The Feeling Of Abandonment, Solitude And Uselessness That Is Caused By The Loss Of Some Beloved Person.
Retirement
Loss
Solitude
I Am Awfully Greedy; I Want Everything From Life. I Want To Be A Woman And To Be A Man, To Have Many Friends And To Have Loneliness, To Work Much And Write Good Books, To Travel And Enjoy Myself, To Be Selfish And To Be Unselfish… You See, It Is Difficult To Get All Which I Want. And Then When I Do Not Succeed I Get Mad With Anger.
Selfish
Work
Loneliness
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.
Balance
Stories
Detectives
One Day I'll Be Old, Dead, Forgotten. And At This Very Moment, While I'm Sitting Here Thinking These Things, A Man In A Dingy Hotel Room Is Thinking, "i Will Always Be Here."
Men
Thinking
One Day
It's True That This Is One Of The Problems Which Often Arises Among My Radical, Revolutionary Feminist Friends: Do You Have To Join The System Or Not? On The One Hand, If You Don't, You Risk Being Ineffectual. But If You Do, From That Moment On, You Place Your Feminism At The Service Of A System Which You Want To Take Apart.
Hands
Feminist
Risk
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.
Would Be
Our Love
Proud
The Writer Can't Stop Her Unconscious From Showing Up, That's Certain.
Showing Up
Certain
Unconscious
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.
Two Of Me
Envy
Self Love
I Had Never Believed In The Sacred Nature Of Literature. God Had Died When I Was Fourteen.
God
Literature
Sacred
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.
Distance
Thinking
Sky
If You Are Truly On The Left, If You Reject Ideas Of Power And Hierarchy, What You Want Is Equality. Otherwise, It Won't Work At All.
Ideas
Want
Hierarchy
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.
Time
Years
Moments
The Day Knowledge Was Preferred To Wisdom And Mere Usefulness To Beauty. . . . Only A Moral Revolution -- Not A Social Or A Political Revolution -- Only A Moral Revolution Would Lead Man Back To His Lost Truth.
Men
Political Revolution
Moral
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.
Sex
Writing
Mean
Dwelling-place And Food Are Useful For Life But Give It No Significance: The Immediate Goals Of The Housekeeper Are Only Means, Not True Ends.
Mean
Dwelling Place
Giving
You Can't Address Yourself To Women By Speaking A Language Which No Average Woman Will Understand. In My Opinion, It's Wrong.
Average
Addresses
Opinion
Patience Is One Of Those Feminine Qualities Which Have Their Origin In Our Oppression But Should Be Preserved After Our Liberation.
Quality
Oppression
Feminine
The Whole World Was Nothing But An Exile With No Hope Of A Return.
World
Return
No Hope
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.
Lying
Sleep
Dust
A Foreign Country Can Best Be Understood Through Its Literature.
Country
Literature
Understood
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.
Communication
Emotional
Two
The Word Love Has By No Means The Same Sense For Both Sexes, And This Is One Cause Of The Serious Misunderstandings That Divide Them.
Sex
Women
Mean
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.
Inspiration
Opportunity
Ideas
A Darwinian Nation Of Economic Fitness Abhors Idleness, Dependence, Non-productivity.
Economic
Dependence
Nations
I Was Very Fond Of Lagneau’s Phrase: “i Have No Comfort But In My Absolute Despair.
Despair
Comfort
Phrases
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.
Children
House
Littles
History Is A Great Cemetery: Men, Deeds, Ideas Are Always Dying As Soon As They Are Born.
Men
Ideas
History
There Are So Many Problems. Women Can Go To Work On These As Well Without Giving Up Their Feminism.
Giving Up
Feminism
Problem
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.
Airplane
Technology
Men
Anais Nin Shows An Occasional Grace In Writing, But Her Work Is Quite Foreign To Me, Precisely Because She Wants So Much To Be Feminine And Not Feminist. And Then She Is So Gaga Before So Many Men. She Talks About Men I Know In France, Men Who Were Less Than Nothing, And She Considers Them Kings, Extraordinary People.
Kings
Writing
Men
Women Have Been Burnt As Witches Simply Because They Were Beautiful.
Beautiful
Witch
Has Beens
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.
Food
Orange
Cooking
I Wish That Every Human Life Might Be Pure Transparent Freedom.
Inspirational
Freedom
4th Of July
To Catch A Husband Is An Art; To Hold Him Is A Job.
Funny
Art
Jobs
The Role Of A Retired Person Is No Longer To Possess One.
Retirement
Roles
Retired
I Cannot Be Angry At God, In Whom I Do Not Believe.
Atheist
Believe
Positive Atheism
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
Life And Love
Intelligent
Feminist
To Make Oneself An Object, To Make Oneself Passive, Is A Very Different Thing From Being A Passive Object.
Acceptance
Different
Passive
When Women Act Like Women, They Are Accused Of Being Inferior. When Women Act Like Human Beings, They Are Accused Of Behaving Like Men.
Men
Justice
Diversity
Sometimes Speech Is No More Than A Device For Saying Nothing - And A Neater One Than Silence.
Silence
Speech
Saying Nothing
There Is A Poetry In Making Preserves; The Housewife Has Caught Duration In The Snare Of Sugar, She Has Enclosed Life In Jars.
Sugar
Duration
Jars
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.
Life
Positive
Reason
Authentic Love Must Be Founded On Reciprocal Recognition Of Two Freedoms. For Each Of Them, Love Would Be The Revelation Of The Self Through The Gift Of The Self And The Enrichment Of The Universe.
Two
Self
Would Be
The Ideal Of Happiness Has Always Taken Material Form In The House, Whether Cottage Or Castle; It Stands For Permanence And Separation From The World.
Taken
Home
House
That Is What Chills Your Spine When You Read An Account Of A Suicide: Not The Frail Corpse Hanging From The Window Bars But What Happened Inside That Heart Immediately Before.
Suicide
Heart
Bars
There Is No Justification For Present Existence Other Than Its Expansion Into An Indefinitely Open Future.
Expansion
Existence
Justification
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.
Women
History
Historical
Literature Takes Its Revenge On Reality By Making It The Slave Of Fiction.
Revenge
Reality
Fiction
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.
Hands
Broken
Unity
He Reflected. 'i Know A Lot Of Different Kids Of People; What I Want Is To Show Each Of Them How The Others Really Are. You Hear So Many Lies!
Lying
Kids
People
It Is In Great Part The Anxiety Of Being A Woman That Devastates The Feminine Body.
Anxiety
Body
Being A Woman
Immortality Is A Terrible Curse.
Immortality
Terrible
Curse
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.
Avant Garde
Able
Said
Each Person Has His Or Her Own Very Particular History And After All, The Unconscious Is The Most Secret Part Of Ourselves.
Secret
Unconscious
Persons
Few Books Are More Thrilling Than Certain Confessions, But They Must Be Honest, And The Author Must Have Something To Confess.
Book
Honest
Confession
I Discovered Feminism Around 1970-72-precisely The Time When Feminism Began To Exist In France. Before That, There Was No Feminism.
Feminism
France
A Man Attaches Himself To Woman -- Not To Enjoy Her, But To Enjoy Himself.
Men
Enjoy
It Is Only On Posters And In Advertisement Pages That Americans Have Those Chubby Cheeks, Expanding Smiles, Smooth Looks, And Faces Flushed With Well-being. In Fact, Almost All Are At Odds With Themselves; Drink Offers A Remedy For This Inner Malady Of Which Boredom Is The Most Usual Sign: As Drinking Is Accepted By Society, It Does Not Appear As A Sign Of Their [americans'] Inability To Adapt Themselves; It Is Rather The Adapted Form Of Inadaptability.
Drinking
Odds
Boredom
There Is A Kind Of Universality In The Human Condition, Masculine Or Feminine. That's One Thing I Continue To Believe.
Believe
Kind
Feminine
What Would Prince Charming Have For Occupation If He Had Not To Awaken The Sleeping Beauty?
Sleep
Occupation
Charming
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.
Doe
Existential
Slave
In Order To Be An Artist, One Must Be Deeply Rooted In The Society.
Artist
Order
Rooted
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.
Men
Weakness
Danger
Society, Being Codified By Man, Decrees That Woman Is Inferior; She Can Do Away With This Inferiority Only By Destroying The Male's Superiority.
Men
Inferiority
Males
If You Haven't Been Happy Very Young, You Can Still Be Happy Later On, But It's Much Harder. You Need More Luck.
Happiness
Luck
Needs
Picasso Never Thought Of Himself As Avant-garde. I Just Find It A Bad Way To Think Of Yourself.
Thinking
Avant Garde
Way
Cooking Is Revolution And Creation.
Cooking
Revolution
Creation
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.
Giving
Age
Goes On
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.
Struggle
Love Is
Self
Be Loved, Be Admired, Be Necessary; Be Somebody.
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.
Being Yourself
Children
Responsibility
Oppression Tries To Defend Itself By Its Utility.
Trying
Oppression
Utility
It Is Impossible To Do Anything For Anyone.
Impossible
The Communists, Following Hegel, Speak Of Humanity And Its Future As Of Some Monolithic Individuality. I Was Attacking This Illusion.
Humanity
Individuality
Speak
It Is For Man To Establish The Reign Of Liberty In The Midst Of The World Of The Given. To Gain The Supreme Victory, It Is Necessary, For One Thing, That By And Through Their Natural Differentiation Men And Women Unequivocally Affirm Their Brotherhood.
Brother
Men
Victory
Christian Ideology Has Contributed No Little To The Oppression Of Woman.
Christian
Littles
Oppression
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.
Light
Rocks
Sea
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.
Ghetto
Thinking
Want
...counselling Man To Treat Her As A Slave While Persuading Her That She Is A Queen.
Queens
Men
Slave
When Someone You Love Dies You Pay For The Sin Of Outliving Her With A Thousand Piercing Regrets.
Regret
Grief
Loss
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
Discovery
Achievement
Littles
Literature Is Born When Something In Life Goes Slightly Adrift.
Library
Literature
Adrift
Indeed, There Is Nothing More Arbitrary Than Intervening As A Stranger In A Destiny Which Is Not Ours.
Destiny
Arbitrary
Existential
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