Self-knowledge is no guarantee of happiness, but it is on the side of happiness and can supply the courage to fight for it.
Simone de BeauvoirTo give space when what one most yearns for is closeness, that is both the great test and great tragedy of love.
Simone de BeauvoirThat a whole part of the middle class detests me... is utterly normal. I would be troubled if the contrary were true.
Simone de BeauvoirScience condemns itself to failure when, yielding to the infatuation of the serious, it aspires to attain being, to contain it, and to possess it; but it finds its truth if it considers itself as a free engagement of thought in the given, aiming, at each discovery, not at fusion with the thing, but at the possibility of new discoveries; what the mind then projects is the concrete accomplishment of its freedom.
Simone de Beauvoir