Simone de Beauvoir

I was convinced that I would be, that I was already, one in a million.

One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, and compassion

Ethics is the triumph of freedom over facticity.

In oppressing, one becomes oppressed. Men are enchained by reason of their very sovereignty; it is because they alone earn money that their wives demand checks, it is because they alone engage in a business or profession that their wives require them to be successful, it is because they alone embody transcendence that their wives wish to rob them of it by taking charge...

A woman's situation, i.e those meanings derived from the total context in which she comes to maturity, disposes her to apprehend her body not as instrument of her transcendence, but "an object destined for another.

We will not let ourselves be intimidated by the number and violence of attacks against women; nor be fooled by the self-serving praise showered on the __eal woman_; nor be won over by men__ enthusiasm for her destiny, a destiny they would not for the world want to share.

One is not born, but rather becomes a woman.

Girls are weighed down by restrictions, boys with demands - two equally harmful disciplines.

[Woman] is simply what man decrees; thus she is called "the sex," by which is meant that she appears essentially to the male as a sexual being. For him she is sex -- absolute sex, no less. She is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her; she is incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. He is the Subject, he is the Absolute -- she is the Other.

Taking without being taken in the anguish of becoming prey is the dangerous game of adolescent feminine sexuality.

: woman is an eminently poetic reality since man projects onto her everything he is not resolved to be.

The little girl feels that her body is escaping her, that it is no longer the clear expression of her individuality: it becomes foreign to her; and at the same moment she is grasped by others as a thing: on the street, eyes follow her, her body is subject to comments; she would like to become invisible; she is afraid of becoming flesh and afraid to show her flesh.

One understands now the drama that rends the adolescent girl at puberty: she cannot become __ grown-up_ without accepting her femininity

The relation of woman to husband, of daughter to father, of sister to brother, is a relation of vassalage.

The relation of woman to husband, of of daughter to father, of sister to brother, is a relation of vassalage.

If so few female geniuses are found in history, it is because society denies them any means of expression.

she gives birth in pain, she heals males' wounds, she nurses the newborn and buries the dead; of man she knows all that offends his pride and humiliates his will. While inclining before him and submitting flesh to spirit, she remains on the carnal borders of the spirit; and she contests the sharpness of hard masculine architecture by softening the angles; she introduces free luxury and unforeseen grace.

Scriassine studied me in turn. "You're not so dumb, you know. Generally I dislike intelligent women, maybe because they're not intelligent enough. They always want to prove to themselves, and to everyone else, how terribly smart they are. So all they do is talk and never understand anything. What struck me the first time I saw you was that way you have of keeping quiet.