When an individual (or a group of individuals) is kept in a situation of inferiority, the fact is that he is inferior.

It is not in giving life but in risking life that man is raised above the animal; that is why superiority has been accorded in humanity not to the sex that brings forth but to that which kills.

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

The younger and healthier a woman is and the more her new and glossy body seems destined for eternal freshness, the less useful is artifice; but the carnal weakness of this prey that man takes and its ominous deterioration always have to be hidden from him...In any case, the more traits and proportions of a woman seem contrived, the more she delighted the heart of man because she seemed to escape the metamorphosis of natural things. The result is this strange paradox that by desiring to grasp nature, but transfigured, in woman, man destines her to artifice.

He reflected. 'I know a lot of different kids of people; what I want is to show each of them how the others really are. You hear so many lies!

it is not the inferiority of women that has caused their historical insignificance; it is rather their historical insignificance that has doomed them to inferiority.

A foreign country can best be understood through its literature.