To give space when what one most yearns for is closeness, that is both the great test and great tragedy of love.

I have never read a really good novel written by a man where women are portrayed as they truly are. They can be portrayed externally very well - Stendhal's Madame de Renal, for example - but only as seen from the outside.

If the feminine issue is so absurd, is because the male's arrogance made it "a discussion

Weakness' is weakness only in light of the aims man sets for himself, the instruments at his disposal and the laws he imposes.

She was not to look beyond herself for the meaning of her life.

And without a doubt it is more comfortable to endure blind bondage than to work for one's liberation; the dead, too, are better suited to the earth than the living.

To make oneself an object, to make oneself passive, is a very different thing from being a passive object.