Simone Lucie-Ernestine-Marie-Bertrand de Beauvoir, 1908 - 1986. French writer and feminist, a member of the intellectual fellowship of philosopher-writers who have given a literary transcription to the themes of Existentialism. She is known primarily for her treatise Le Deuxième Sexe, 2 vol. (1949; The Second Sex), a scholarly and passionate plea for the abolition of what she called the myth of the “eternal feminine.”
The light made its way through my eyelids. I kept them closed. My head was heavy: I was deathly sad. I could not remember my dreams. I had sunk down into black depths---liquid and stifling, like diesel oil---and now, this morning, I was only just coming to the surface.
Jealousy is not contemptible -- real love has a beak and claws.
But between the past which no longer is and the future which is not yet, this moment when he [man] exists is nothing. This privilege, which he alone possesses, of being a sovereign and unique subject amidst a universe of objects, is what he shares with all his fellow-men. In turn, an object for others. He is nothing more than an individual in the collectivity on which he depends.
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.
Each one has the incomparable taste in his mouth of his own life, and yet each feels himself more insignificant than an insect within the immense collectivity whose limits are one with the earth's.
As you read so you remember; or at least you have the illusion of remembering.
More Quotes by Simone de Beauvoir: Page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
