Simone de Beauvoir (1908–86,) fully Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir, was a French existentialist philosopher, novelist, and feminist. Beauvoir’s fame is primarily attributed to her groundbreaking study of women’s oppression in The Second Sex (1949,) her post-World War II novel The Mandarins (1954,) and her lifelong partnership with French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
Born in Paris, de Beauvoir entered the Sorbonne, where she became the youngest person to receive a degree in French history. She met and fell in love with another philosophy student, Sartre, who would later become the father of existentialism. They remained associates and lovers for the rest of their lives.
Inspired by Sartre, de Beauvoir studied how women had been treated throughout history. After weeks of research at the Paris’s National Library, de Beauvoir published Le Deuxième Sexe (The Second Sex, 1949,) in which she wrote, “One is not born a woman, one becomes one.” It was one of the first wide-ranging arguments that the difference between the sexes was the result of culture, not nature. It became the basis of the modern feminist movement. The Second Sex laments the female condition but does not propose any tangible solutions except “that men and women rise above their natural differentiation and unequivocally affirm their brotherhood.”
De Beauvoir also wrote novels and autobiographical works, including Mémoires D’une Jeune Fille Rangée (Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, 1958,) the story of her rejection of the bourgeois values of her parents’ lives, La Force de l’âge (The Prime of Life, 1960,) which tells the story of her relationship with Sartre and the years they spent together during World War II.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Simone de Beauvoir
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.
—Simone de Beauvoir
Topics: Change
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.
—Simone de Beauvoir
Topics: Marriage
If you live long enough, you’ll see that every victory turns into a defeat.
—Simone de Beauvoir
Topics: Victory, War, Defeat, Success is not everything
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.
—Simone de Beauvoir
Buying is a profound pleasure.
—Simone de Beauvoir
Topics: Shopping
One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.
—Simone de Beauvoir
In the face of an obstacle which is impossible to overcome, stubbornness is stupid.
—Simone de Beauvoir
In order for the artist to have a world to express he must first be situated in this world, oppressed or oppressing, resigned or rebellious, a man among men.
—Simone de Beauvoir
Topics: Arts, Artists, Art
No one is more arrogant toward women, more aggressive or scornful, than the man who is anxious about his virility.
—Simone de Beauvoir
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.
—Simone de Beauvoir
Topics: Age, Aging
Men tend to take abortion lightly; they regard it as one of the numerous hazards imposed on women by malignant nature, but fail to realise fully the values involved. The woman who has recourse to abortion is disowning feminine values, her values, and at the same time is in most radical fashion running counter to the ethics established by men. Her whole moral universe is being disrupted….[H]ow could they fail to feel an inner mistrust of the presumptuous principles that men publicly proclaim and secretly disregard? They learn to believe no longer in what men say when they exalt woman or when they exalt man; the one thing they are sure of is this rifled and bleeding womb, these shreds of crimson life, this child that is not there.
—Simone de Beauvoir
One is not born a genius. One becomes a genius.
—Simone de Beauvoir
Topics: Genius
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.
—Simone de Beauvoir
Topics: Guilt
Self-knowledge is no guarantee of happiness, but it is on the side of happiness and can supply the courage to fight for it.
—Simone de Beauvoir
Retirement may be looked upon either as a prolonged holiday or as a rejection, a being thrown on to the scrap-heap.
—Simone de Beauvoir
Topics: Retirement
One’s life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation, compassion.
—Simone de Beauvoir
Topics: Compassion, Service
Society cares for the individual only so far as he is profitable.
—Simone de Beauvoir
Topics: Society
This has always been a man’s world, and none of the reasons that have been offered in explanation have seemed adequate.
—Simone de Beauvoir
Topics: Explanation
Let women be provided with living strength of their own. Let them have the means to attack the world and wrest from it their own subsistence, and their dependence will be abolished—that of man also.
—Simone de Beauvoir
Topics: Men & Women
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.
—Simone de Beauvoir
All oppression creates a state of war; this is no exception.
—Simone de Beauvoir
Topics: Oppression
Sex pleasure in woman is a kind of magic spell; it demands complete abandon; if words or movements oppose the magic of caresses, the spell is broken.
—Simone de Beauvoir
Topics: Sex
When an individual is kept in a situation of inferiority, the fact is that he does become inferior.
—Simone de Beauvoir
Topics: Feminism, Women
To catch a husband is an art; to hold him is a job.
—Simone de Beauvoir
Topics: Husbands, Marriage, Jobs
On the day when it will be possible for woman to love not in her weakness but in 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. In the meantime, love represents in its most touching form the curse that lies heavily upon woman confined in the feminine universe, woman mutilated, insufficient unto herself.
—Simone de Beauvoir
Topics: Men & Women
I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom.
—Simone de Beauvoir
Topics: Freedom
I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth — and truth rewarded me.
—Simone de Beauvoir
Topics: Truth, Certainty
To make oneself an object, to make oneself passive, is a very different thing from being a passive object.
—Simone de Beauvoir
Topics: Acceptance
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.
—Simone de Beauvoir
Topics: Home
It is old age, rather than death, that is to be contrasted with life. Old age is life’s parody, whereas death transforms life into a destiny: in a way it preserves it by giving it the absolute dimension. Death does away with time.
—Simone de Beauvoir
Topics: Age, Aging
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