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.
simone De Beauvoirquotes
1908 - 1986
French author and activist, Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986), is considered the mother of the modern feminist movement. In her famous treatise, The Second Sex, she rejects the artificial femininity created to support a male-driven worldview that theirs is the essential sex, calling for a moral revolution.
Raised by middle-class, Catholic parents, Simone rejected her faith and upbringing (Memoirs of Dutiful Daughter) to pursue the philosophical examination of existence. Her radical, open-relationship with the father of existentialism himself, Jean-Paul Sartre, influenced her writing more than anyone else, even declaring their relationship her greatest achievement.
Her many memoirs endeared her to the public despite her embrace of communism. A Very Easy Death, her most touching memoir, contains reflections on her mother’s last days. The novel She Came to Stay examines jealousy and angst in a fictionalized account of Simone’s strained love-triangle with Sartre and former student, Olga.
From philosophy (The Ethics of Ambiguity) to travel accounts of China (The Long March) and the U.S. (America Day by Day), recurring themes of femininity and existentialism, in all her works, continue to engage and inspire.
Her most famous novel, The Mandarins, won the acclaimed French Literary award, the Prix Goncourt. It chronicles the lives of postwar, French intellectuals who leave their elite and privileged social status for a life of political activism. De Beauvoir always did find the French overly obsessed with money and class.
In the words of the headline that announced de Beauvoir’s death, feminists today still proclaim, “Women! You owe her everything!”
I am incapable of conceiving infinity, and yet I do not accept finity. I want this adventure that is the context of my life to go on without end.
To lose confidence in one’s body is to lose confidence in oneself.
If you live long enough, you’ll see that every victory turns into a defeat.
I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth – and truth rewarded me.
On the day when it will be possible for woman to love not in her weakness but in her 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.
What an odd thing a diary is: the things you omit are more important than those you put in.
A man attaches himself to woman – not to enjoy her, but to enjoy himself.
One’s life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, and compassion.
compassion / friendship / love
That’s what I consider true generosity: You give your all, and yet you always feel as if it costs you nothing.