Simone de Beauvoir Quotes

Before adolescence, memory is more interested in the future than the past...

The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.

[Belafonte]'d take me to perform for Martin Luther King's cause. But when they were marching I did not take part, because I was not a citizen

And it doesn't seem to matter, and it doesn't seem right,
'Cause the will has brought no fortune, still I cry alone at night,
Don't you judge of my composure, 'cause I'm bothered every day,
And she didn't leave a letter, she just up and ran away.

[W]hen the President's visitors came to Guinea, we were all called on to go and entertain them. I've never seen a country that did what Sékou Touré did for artists. Even in South Africa today we are not nurtured like that.

I was born in a poor country. I was poor, but I lived all my life with what I had. I didn’t spend more than I had. Cape Verde is not the only place where there are poor people

If you don't save something on your current income, you won't save anything on your future income.

If it does not grow, even though you are working hard, it is not because of unfavorable circumstances, bad timing, or bad luck. ... of the past has shown, it is during the bad times that the skilled manager lays firm foundations for future growth.

Su Tungp'o said: "Life is like a spring dream which vanishes without a trace." I should be ungrateful to the gods if I did not try to put my life down on record.

I marvel at how one role model can alter for the better the future of a young student. This experience taught me that valuable advice can sometimes come from an unexpected source, and chance events can sometimes open new doors.

What was the future? The future was a solid wall, not promising, not threatening—all bunk. No guarantees of anything, not even the guarantee that life isn't one big joke.

Splendid Things
Chinese brocade. A sword with a decorated scabbard. The grain of the wood in a Buddhist statue. Long flowering branches of beautifully coloured wistaria entwined about a pine tree. (p. 109)

Listen, if you guys wanna move around and shift your asses a little, it's okay. It's okay by us, right? You can take all your clothes off if you like too, doesn't matter... Fuck off! [laughs]

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

In each separate thing that you do consider the matters which come first, and those which follow after, and only then approach the thing itself.

He lived year after year. He attended only to himself and to God and this picture-but he did not understand himself.