I think that where you go wrong is that you imagine that your reasons for living ought to fall on you, ready-made from heaven, whereas we have to find them for ourselves.
Simone de BeauvoirVirginia Woolf thought a lot about her own sex when she wrote. In the best sense of the word, her writing is very feminine, and by that I mean that women are supposed to be very sensitive to all the sensations of nature, much more so than men, much more contemplative. It's this quality that marks her best works.
Simone de BeauvoirWe always come back to the same vicious circle - an extreme degree of material or intellectual poverty does away with the means of alleviating it.
Simone de BeauvoirFor me, the problem of time is linked up with that of death, with the thought that we inevitably draw closer and closer to it, with the horror of decay.
Simone de BeauvoirChoice springs from the totality of the person. Thus, to study, to analyze what a person is, does not eliminate the idea of freedom.
Simone de BeauvoirFew 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. The housewife wears herself out marking time: she makes nothing, simply perpetuates the present … Eating, sleeping, cleaning – the years no longer rise up towards heaven, they lie spread out ahead, grey and identical. The battle against dust and dirt is never won.
Simone de Beauvoir