Simone de Beauvoir

The world is not a collection of things, but a collection of relationships.

To love is to will the other's freedom.

The meaning of life is not to be found in some transcendent realm, but in our concrete existence.

The human being is a being-for-itself, a being who is always in the process of becoming.

I am awfully greedy; I want everything from life. I want to be a woman and to be a man, to have many friends and to have loneliness, to work much and write good books, to travel and enjoy myself, to be selfish and to be unselfish… You see, it is difficult to get all which I want. And then when I do not succeed I get mad with anger.

I was made for another planet altogether. I mistook the way.

To catch a husband is an art; to hold him is a job.

Buying is a profound pleasure.

What is an adult? A child blown up by age.

When women act like human beings, they are accused of behaving like men.

If the feminine issue is so absurd, is because the male's arrogance made it 'a discussion.'

Her wings are cut and then she is blamed for not knowing how to fly.

No one is more arrogant toward women, more aggressive or scornful, than the man who is anxious about his virility.

I am too intelligent, too demanding, and too resourceful for anyone to be able to take charge of me entirely. No one knows me or loves me completely. I have only myself.

She was ready to deny the existence of space and time rather than admit that love might not be eternal.

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

There is something in the New York air that makes sleep useless.

I am better at dry sadness than at cold anger, for I remained dry eyed until now, as dry as smoked fish, but my heart is a kind of dirty soft custard inside.

This advice is absurd. Precisely because the idea of femininity is artificially defined by customs and fashion, it is imposed on every woman from the outside. The individual is not free to shape the idea of femininity at will.

Man vainly forgets that his anatomy also contains hormones and testicles.