Simone de Beauvoir · 479 pages
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“To abstain from politics is in itself a political attitude.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, quote from Prime of Life (1929-1944)
“To be oneself, simply oneself, is so amazing and utterly unique an experience that it's hard to convince oneself so singular a thing happens to everybody.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, quote from Prime of Life (1929-1944)
“Je sais qu'on ne peut jamais se connaître, mais seulement se raconter.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, quote from Prime of Life (1929-1944)
“In the old days the worst part of my depression used to be the astonishment it caused me, the scandalized way in which I fought against it. Nowadays, on the other hand, I accept it cheerfully enough, like an old familiar friend.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, quote from Prime of Life (1929-1944)
“Les cas extrêmes nous attachaient, au même titre que les névroses et les psychoses : on y retrouvait exagérées, épurées, dotées d'un saisissant relief les attitudes et les passions des gens qu'on appelle normaux.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, quote from Prime of Life (1929-1944)
“The comradeship that welded our lives together made a superfluous mockery of any other bond we might have forged for ourselves.What, for instance, was the point of living under the same roof when the whole world was our common property?Why fear to set great distances between us when we could never truly be parted?One single aim fired us, the urge to embrace all experience, and to bear witness concerning it ...That which bound us freed us and in this freedom we found ourselves bound as closely as possible”
― Simone de Beauvoir, quote from Prime of Life (1929-1944)
“Today it strikes me that the most important aspect of these conversations was not so much what we said as what we took for granted, and what in fact was not so at all. We were wrong about almost everything. An accurate character sketch must take these errors into account, since they expressed one kind of reality - our actual situation.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, quote from Prime of Life (1929-1944)
“Trudging alone along that black road, sometimes in the teeth of wind and rain, and watching the white distant gleam of convolvulus through the park railings, gave me an exhilarating sensation of adventure.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, quote from Prime of Life (1929-1944)
“...which we welcomed precisely because it happened to suit our convenience.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, quote from Prime of Life (1929-1944)
“In those days we saw every sort of object as though it were one of those tiny handkerchiefs from which a conjuror can produce silk scarfs, streamers, flags, and yards of ribbon. A cup of coffee became a kaleidoscope in which we could spend ages watching the mutable reflections of ceiling or chandelier.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, quote from Prime of Life (1929-1944)
“There were no scruples, no feelings of respect or loyal affection that would stop us from making up our minds by the pure light of reason - and of our own desires.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, quote from Prime of Life (1929-1944)
“I enjoyed my exhaustion, though; I liked overdoing things”
― Simone de Beauvoir, quote from Prime of Life (1929-1944)
“Scents, patterns of light and shade, winds and hurricanes — all pulsed inwardly through my own sinews and veins: so much so, indeed, that the throb of my blood stream, the swarming growth of my cells, the whole mystery of life housed within me seemed to be echoed by the shrilling cicadas, the gusts of wind that shook the trees, and the faint crunch of the moss as I trod it underfoot.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, quote from Prime of Life (1929-1944)
“I was too enamored of truth ever to mourn lost illusions.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, quote from Prime of Life (1929-1944)
Simone de Beauvoir
Born place: in Paris, France
Born date January 9, 1908
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“What meaning has a compliment if one hears it night and day.”
― Irving Stone, quote from The Agony and the Ecstasy
“Daemon snatched the yellow packages from my hands. “Oh! Books! You have books!”
I laughed as several people waiting in line looked over their shoulders. “Hand them over.”
He clutched them to his chest, making moony eyes. “My life is now complete.”
“My life would be complete if I could actually post a review on something other than the school library computers.”
I did that about twice a week since my latest laptop went to the big computer heaven in the sky.”
― Jennifer L. Armentrout, quote from Opal
“This is what I thought: for the most banal even to become an adventure, you must (and this is enough) begin to recount it. This is what fools people: a man is always a teller of tales, he sees everything that happens to him through them; and he tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story.
But you have to choose: live or tell.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, quote from Nausea
“It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end… because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing… this shadow. Even darkness must pass.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, quote from The Two Towers
“I might have felt unimportant pitted against the awesome might of the mountains. I did not. Rather, on that mountain top I found something important that I had never known before: an awareness of a vital connection between me and the Authority behind all this beauty.”
― Catherine Marshall, quote from Christy
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