Simone de Beauvoir Quotes

One is not born a woman - one becomes one.

One is not born a genius one becomes a genius.

The fact that we are human beings is infinitely more important than all the peculiarities that distinguish human beings from one another.

Change your life today. Don't gamble on the future act now without delay.

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.

In the face of an obstacle which is impossible to overcome stubbornness is stupid.

God! when you think of all the things you could do and yet somehow never do! All the opportunities you let slip by! The idea, the inspiration just doesn't come fast enough. Instead of being open, you're closed up tight. Thats's the worst sin of all - the sin of omission.

I should like to be the landscape which I am contemplating, I should like this sky, this quiet water to think themselves within me, that it might be I whom they express in flesh and bone, and I remain at a distance. But it is also by this distance that the sky and the water exist before me. My contemplation is an excruciation only because it is also a joy. I can not appropriate the snow field where i slide. It remains foreign, forbidden, but I take delight in this very effort toward an impossible possession. I experience it as a triumph, not as a defeat.