Simone de Beauvoir

If you haven't been happy very young you can still be happy later on but it's much harder. You need more luck.

One is not born a genius one becomes a genius.

Live with no time out.

That's what I consider true generosity. You give your all and yet you always feel as if it costs you nothing.

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

You can't assume the responsibility for everything you do-or don't do.

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

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

One is not born a woman - one becomes one.

__ day in which I don't write leaves a taste of ashes.

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.

Defending the truth is not something one does out of a sense of duty or to allay guilt complexes but is a reward in itself.

In a way, literature is true than life,' he said to himself. 'On paper, you say exactly and completely what you feel. How easy it is to break things off on paper! You hate, you shout, you kill, you commit suicide; you carry things to the very end. And that's why it's false. But it's damned satisfying. In life, you're constantly denying yourself, and others are always contradicting you. On paper, I make time stand still and I impose my convictions on the whole world; they become the only reality.

The role of a retired person is no longer to possess one.

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

It's not a very big step from contentment to complacency.

It was easier for me to think of a world without a creator than of a creator burdened with all the contradictions in the world.

Alone: for the first time I understood the terrible significance of that word. Alone without a witness, without anyone to speak to, without refuge. The breath in my body, the blood in my veins, all this hurly-burly in my head existed for nobody.