It's frightening to think that you mark your children merely by being yourself. It seems unfair. You can't assume the responsibility for everything you do --or don't do.
Simone de BeauvoirAll the idols made by man, however terrifying they may be, are in point of fact subordinate to him, and that is why he will always have it in his power to destroy them.
Simone de BeauvoirNo one is more arrogant toward women, more aggressive or scornful, than the man who is anxious about his virility.
Simone de BeauvoirTo make oneself an object, to make oneself passive, is a very different thing from being a passive object.
Simone de BeauvoirI should like to be the landscape which I am contemplating, I should like this sky, this quiet water to think themselves within me, that it might be I whom they express in flesh and bone, and I remain at a distance. But it is also by this distance that the sky and the water exist before me. My contemplation is an excruciation only because it is also a joy. I can not appropriate the snow field where i slide. It remains foreign, forbidden, but I take delight in this very effort toward an impossible possession. I experience it as a triumph, not as a defeat.
Simone de Beauvoir