Background Image

...

There Are Jobs That Can Be Done Equally Well By Men Or By Women And That Finally You Can't See A Difference. But From The Moment That You Involve Yourself Fully In Writing A Novel, For Example, Or An Essay, Then You Are Involved As A Woman, In The Same Way That You Can't Deny Your Nationality - You Are French, You Are A Man, You Are A Woman... All This Passes Into The Writing.

-Simone De Beauvoir

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

There Are Jobs That

Simone De Beauvoir

...

There Are Jobs That Can Be Done Equally Well By Men Or By Women And That Finally You Can't See A Difference. But From The Moment That You Involve Yourself Fully In Writing A Novel, For Example, Or An Essay, Then You Are Involved As A Woman, In The Same Way That You Can't Deny Your Nationality - You Are French, You Are A Man, You Are A Woman... All This Passes Into The Writing.

Views: 64659

Topic

More From Simone De Beauvoir

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.

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.

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.

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 Take On A Shape And An Existence Only If I First Throw Myself Into The World By Loving, By Doing.

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.

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.

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.

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 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 Writer Of Originality, Unless Dead, Is Always Shocking, Scandalous; Novelty Disturbs And Repels.

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

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

Cooking Is Revolution And Creation.

Each Of Us Is Responsible For Everything And To Every Human Being.

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)

Literature Takes Its Revenge On Reality By Making It The Slave Of Fiction.

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.

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.

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

Positive Atheism

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

I Tore Myself Away From The Safe Comfort Of Certainties Through My Love For Truth - And Truth Rewarded Me.

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.

When We Abolish The Slavery Of Half Of Humanity, Together With The Whole System Of Hypocrisy It Implies, Then The "division" Of Humanity Will Reveal Its Genuine Significance And The Human Couple Will Find Its True Form.

Even If One Is Neither Vain Nor Self-obsessed, It Is So Extraordinary To Be Oneself - Exactly Oneself And No One Else - And So Unique, That It Seems Natural That One Should Also Be Unique For Someone Else.

It Is Impossible To Do Anything For Anyone.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

I Don't Want To Be Just Another Blade Of Grass.

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.

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.

The Way I Approached A Question, My Habit Of Mind, The Way I Looked At Things, What I Took For Granted - All This Was Myself And It Did Not Seem To Me That I Could Alter It.

Harmony Between Two Individuals Is Never Granted-it Has To Be Conquered Indefinitely.

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!

Capabilities Are Clearly Manifested Only When They Have Been Realized.

No Woman Should Be Authorized To Stay At Home And Raise Her Children. Society Should Be Totally Different. Women Should Not Have That Choice, Precisely Because If There Is Such A Choice, Too Many Women Will Make That One.

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.

To Emancipate Woman Is To Refuse To Confine Her To The Relations She Bears To Man, Not To Deny Them To Her; Let Her Have Her Independent Existence And She Will Continue Nonetheless To Exist For Him Also: Mutually Recognising Each Other As Subject, Each Will Yet Remain For The Other An Other...when We Abolish The Slavery Of Half Of Humanity, Together With The Whole System Of Hypocrisy That It Implies, Then The 'division' Of Humanity Will Reveal Its Genuine Significance And The Human Couple Will Find Its True Form.

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

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

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.

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.

One Is Not Born, But Rather Becomes, A Woman.

There Is A Kind Of Universality In The Human Condition, Masculine Or Feminine. That's One Thing I Continue To Believe.

The Misfortune Is That Although Everyone Must Come To [death], Each Experiences The Adventure In Solitude. We Never Left Maman During Those Last Days... And Yet We Were Profoundly Separated From Her.

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

The Arrogance Of Some Christians Would Close Heaven To Them If, To Their Misfortune, It Existed.

Weakness' Is Weakness Only In Light Of The Aims Man Sets For Himself, The Instruments At His Disposal And The Laws He Imposes.

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.

To Abstain From Politics Is In Itself A Political Attitude.

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

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

Some Things I Loved Have Vanished. A Great Many Others Have Been Given To Me

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.

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!

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.

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.

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

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

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.

The Knight Departing For New Adventures Offends His Lady, Yet She Has Nothing But Contempt For Him If He Remains At Her Feet.

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

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.

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

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.

Change Your Life Today. Don't Gamble On The Future, Act Now, Without Delay.

Inspirational Life

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

Marriage Is Traditionally The Destiny Offered To Women By Society. Most Women Are Married Or Have Been, Or Plan To Be Or Suffer From Not Being.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

All Success Cloaks A Surrender

My Life Was Hurrying, Racing Tragically Toward Its End. And Yet At The Same Time It Was Dripping So Slowly, So Very Slowly Now, Hour By Hour, Minute By Minute. One Always Has To Wait Until The Sugar Melts, The Memory Dies, The Wound Scars Over, The Sun Sets, The Unhappiness Lifts And Fades Away.

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

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.

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.

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

To Will Oneself Moral And To Will Oneself Free Are One And The Same Decision.

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?

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.

There Are So Many Problems. Women Can Go To Work On These As Well Without Giving Up Their Feminism.

Si L'on Vit Assez Longtemps, On Voit Que Toute Victoire Se Change Un Jour En De Faite. If You Live Long Enough, You'll Find That Every Victory Turns Into A Defeat.

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.

To Lose Confidence In One’s Body Is To Lose Confidence In Oneself.

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

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.

There Is Something In The New York Air That Makes Sleep Useless.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

There Has To Be A Certain Relationship Between The Life And The Writing Style, And That Is Really A Problem.

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

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.

You Can't Define The Future. And In My Opinion, You Can't Define The Avant-garde.

A Man Is In The Right In Being A Man; It Is The Woman Who Is In The Wrong.

There Is Something False In This Search For A Purely Feminine Writing Style. Language, Such As It Is, Is Inherited From A Masculine Society, And It Contains Many Male Prejudices. We Must Rid Language Of All That. Still, A Language Is Not Something Created Artificially; The Proletariat Can't Use A Different Language From The Bourgeoisie, Even If They Use It Differently, Even If From Time To Time They Invent Something, Technical Words Or Even A Kind Of Worker's Slang, Which Can Be Very Beautiful And Very Rich. Women Can Do That As Well, Enrich Their Language, Clean It Up.

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

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.

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

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

When Someone You Love Dies You Pay For The Sin Of Outliving Her With A Thousand Piercing Regrets.

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.

If The Unconscious Must Express Itself It Will Do So Through The Work That You Do Consciously Or Subconsciously, With Words, With What You Have To Say.

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.

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

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

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.

We Must Not Confuse The Present With The Past. With Regard To The Past, No Further Action Is Possible.

Woman Is Determined Not By Her Hormones Or By Mysterious Instincts, But By The Manner In Which Her Body And Her Relation To The World Are Modified Through The Action Of Others Than Herself.

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.

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

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.

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.

The Communists, Following Hegel, Speak Of Humanity And Its Future As Of Some Monolithic Individuality. I Was Attacking This Illusion.

Each Person Has His Or Her Own Very Particular History And After All, The Unconscious Is The Most Secret Part Of Ourselves.

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.

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

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.

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

Anger Or Revolt That Does Not Get Into The Muscles Remains A Figment Of The Imagination.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

I Consider It Almost Antifeminist To Say That There Is A Feminine Nature Which Expresses Itself Differently, That A Woman Speaks Her Body More Than A Man, Because After All, Men Also Speak Their Bodies When They Write. Everything Is Implicated In The Work Of A Writer.

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.

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.

Buying Is A Profound Pleasure.

To Protest In The Name Of Morality Against 'excesses' Or 'abuses' Is An Error Which Hints On Active Complicity. There Are No 'abuses' Or 'excesses' Here, Simpily An All-pervasive System.

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

It Is True That Nothing Is Gained Without Something Being Lost: Everyone Knows That In Fulfilling Oneself One Necessarily Sacrifices Some Possibilities.

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

At Bottom, Antipsychiatry Is Still Psychiatry. And It Doesn't Really Address Itself To Women's Problems.

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.

…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.

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.

Political Revolution

Justice Can Never Be Done In The Midst Of Injustice.

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

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.

Habit Has A Kind Of Poetry.

Buying Is Profound Pleasure.

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

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.

A Man Would Never Get The Notion Of Writing A Book On The Peculiar Situation Of The Human Male.

What An Odd Thing A Diary Is: The Things You Omit Are More Important Than Those You Put In.

The Torment That So Many Young Women Know, Bound Hand And Foot By Love And Motherhood, Without Having Forgotten Their Former Dreams.

You Can't Assume The Responsibility For Everything You Do Or Don't Do.

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.

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 Even More Deceptive To Dream Of Gaining Through The Child A Plenitude, A Warmth, A Value, Which One Is Unable To Create For Oneself; The Child Brings Joy Only To The Woman Who Is Capable Of Disinterestedly Desiring The Happiness Of Another, To One Who Without Being Wrapped Up In Self Seeks To Transcend Her Own Existence.

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.

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

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

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.

It's Not A Very Big Step From Contentment To Complacency.

I Discovered Feminism Around 1970-72-precisely The Time When Feminism Began To Exist In France. Before That, There Was No Feminism.

Youth And What The Italians So Prettily Call Stamina. The Vigor, The Fire, That Enables You To Love And Create. When You've Lost That, You've Lost Everything.

Lost Everything

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Choice Springs From The Totality Of The Person. Thus, To Study, To Analyze What A Person Is, Does Not Eliminate The Idea Of Freedom.

Old Age Is Life's Parody.

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

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.

If Women Really Did Have Complete Equality With Men, Society Would Be Completely Overturned.

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.

The Point Is Not For Women Simply To Take Power Out Of Men’s Hands, Since That Wouldn’t Change Anything About The World. It’s A Question Precisely Of Destroying That Notion Of Power.

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

Literature Is Born When Something In Life Goes Slightly Adrift.

Literature Is Always What The Dominant Ideology Recognizes As Literature.

Man Is Defined As A Human Being And A Woman As A Female - Whenever She Behaves As A Human Being She Is Said To Imitate The Male.

Those Interested In Perpetuating Present Conditions Are Always In Tears About The Marvelous Past That Is About To Disappear, Without Having So Much As A Smile For The Young Future.

It Is In Great Part The Anxiety Of Being A Woman That Devastates The Feminine Body.

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.

No One Is More Arrogant Toward Women, More Aggressive Or Scornful, Than The Man Who Is Anxious About His Virility.

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

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.

Tragedies Are All Right For A While: You Are Concerned, You Are Curious, You Feel Good. And Then It Gets Repetitive, It Doesn't Advance, It Grows Dreadfully Boring: It Is So Very Boring, Even For Me.

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 Whole World Was Nothing But An Exile With No Hope Of A Return.

Sometimes You Can Accept An Important Post, On Condition That It Really Puts You In A Position To Help Women. Unfortunately, Women Who Have Important Posts Very Often Adopt Masculine Standards-power, Ambition, Personal Success - And Cut Themselves Off From Other Women.

Trending Author

Robert A. Heinlein

Johnnie Cochran

Category