Simone de Beauvoir Quotes

Do not say, "It is morning," and dismiss it with a name of yesterday. See it for the first time as a new-born child that has no name.

The truth is a trap: you can not get it without it getting you; you cannot get the truth by capturing it, only by its capturing you.

Reason is like an officer when the King appears;
The officer then loses his power and hides himself.
Reason is the shadow cast by God; God is the sun.

Success doesn't change you; fame does.

We have been exceedingly busy ever since you went away. In the first place we have had to rejoice two or three times everyday at your having such very delightful weather for the whole of your journey...

This is the last time I'm asking you this,
Put my name at the top of your lips.
This is the last time I'm asking you why
You break my heart in the blink of an eye, eye, eye.

Life seems to me essentially passion, conflict, rage... It is only intellect that keeps me sane; perhaps this makes me overvalue intellect against feeling.

The quality of your life is the quality of your communication.

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

Every time you smile, I smile
And every time you shine, I'll shine for you.

African music, though very old, is always being rediscovered in the West.

You can get everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.

It is a lovely night, and they are much to be pitied who have not been taught to feel, in some degree, as you do; who have not, at least, been given a taste for Nature in early life. They lose a great deal.

This discipline and rough treatment are a furnace to extract the silver from the dross. This testing purifies the gold by boiling the scum away.

Without effort and change, human life cannot remain good. It is not a finished Utopia that we ought to desire, but a world where imagination and hope are alive and active.

Both in thought and in feeling, even though time be real, to realise the unimportance of time is the gate of wisdom.