Simone de Beauvoir cytaty

strona 4

„Oto jak wygląda życie: dom, kobieta, której nie kocha się ani za bardzo, ani za mało. A ona, jak kocha? Przypuszczam, że i zanadto i za mało, jak wszystkie kobiety.”

„To dla kobiety katastrofa być kochaną przez literata.”

„Nagość zaczyna się od twarzy, a bezwstyd od słów.”

„Nie mów nigdy wobec mężczyzny, że jakaś kobieta jest piękna, bo mógłby sobie wyobrazić, że ty jej nie dorównujesz. I bądź pewna, że żadna kobieta nie będzie na tyle głupia, aby odwzajemnić twoje pochwały.”

„Nie sposób bronić demokracji demokratycznymi metodami.”

„Zbyt wiele kobiet otacza się miłością i szacunkiem, by je zdradzić uważając się za mężczyznę honoris causa.”

„Kobieta przebacza wszystko. Ale za to często przypomina o tym, że przebaczyła.”

„Kobieta nigdy nie powinna wobec mężczyzny mówić o innej, że jest piękna, bo może on sobie wyobrazić, że jej nie dorównuje – a żadna kobieta nie jest na tyle głupia, by odwzajemnić te pochwały.”

„To wstrętne, gdy kobieta, odwołując się do mózgu mężczyzny, stara się przyciągnąć go do swego ciała.”

„Bogactwo zawsze nastawione jest na pokaz, ale życie człowieka biednego – to rzecz poufna.”

„Miłość właściwie nigdy nie ma nas wyłącznie na celu – jest niepewna, jak życie, ale nienawiść nigdy nie chybia – jest pewna jak śmierć.”

„Pewien typ wyrzutów sumienia chroni nas przed innymi wyrzutami.”

„Być nikim to w gruncie rzeczy przywilej.”

„Nic bardziej zgubnego, jak żyć w cieniu sławy. Człowiek gaśnie.”

„Okropnie przykro jest patrzeć, jak umiera nadzieja.”

„Kiedy miłość jest wystarczająco silna, oczekiwanie staje się szczęściem.”

„Dzięki utożsamieniu członka z transcendencją sukcesy społeczne i duchowe mężczyzny promieniują również na czysto męskie walory.”

„Nikt by nie uwierzył, jakie mnóstwo łez mieści się w kobiecych oczach.”

„Kiedy człowiek naprawdę nie chce dłużej kochać, wtedy kochać przestaje, ale ta decyzja nigdy nie jest przypadkowa.”

„Co to jest człowiek dorosły? Dziecko nadęte latami.”

„Im mniej rozpoznaję się w swoim ciele, tym bardziej czuję się zobowiązana do tego, by o nie dbać. Zostało mi ono powierzone: pielęgnuję je niczym przyjaciela, którego potrzebuję.”

„Takie dziwne zatracić się całkowicie w kimś innym. Ale jakaż nagroda, gdy się tego kogoś odnajduje w sobie.”

„Gospodyni domowa drepce w miejscu, nic nie czyni, tylko utrwala czas teraźniejszy; nie ma ona wrażenia, że zdobywa pozytywne Dobro, lecz tylko że bezustannie walczy przeciw Złu.”

„Cóż warta byłaby miłość, gdyby cokolwiek mogło ją zastąpić? Miłość jest ostateczna, jak śmierć.”

„Czy nie warto by zawiązać ligi, która by występowała przeciw wszystkim innym ligom?”

„Kiedy człowiek jest zakochany, ukazuje się światu takim, jakim powinien być zawsze.”

„Świat waha się między wojną a pokojem i przyszłość zależy, być może, od jakiegoś drobiazgu; zbrodnią byłoby nie wypróbować wszystkiego, co mogłoby zapewnić spokój.”

„W gruncie rzeczy urlop to rzecz ogromnie męcząca: co dzień trzeba szukać sposobu, jak zabić czas.”

“I realized that even if we went on talking till Judgment Day, I would still find the time all too short.”

“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 no to the sex that brings forth but to that which kills.”

“The body is the instrument of our hold on the world.”

“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.”

“I was very fond of Lagneau’s phrase: “I have no comfort but in my absolute despair.”

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

“There is only one solution if old age is not to be an absurd parody of our former life, and that is to go on pursuing ends that give our existence a meaning.”

“He formed his sentences hesitantly and then threw them at me with such force that I felt as if I were receiving a present each time”

“Life is occupied in both perpetuating itself and in surpassing itself; if all it does is maintain itself, then living is only not dying.”

“I love you, with a touch of tragedy and quite madly.”

“The way I approached a question, my habit of mind, the way I looked at things, what I took for granted - all this was myself and it did not seem to me that I could alter it.”

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

“A couple who go on living together merely because that was how they began, without any other reason: was that what we were turning into?”

“One day I'll be old, dead, forgotten. And at this very moment, while I'm sitting here thinking these things, a man in a dingy hotel room is thinking, "I will always be here."”

“Work almost always has a double aspect: it is a bondage, a wearisome drudgery; but it is also a source of interest, a steadying element, a factor that helps to integrate the worker with society. Retirement may be looked upon either as a prolonged holiday or as a rejection, a being thrown on to the scrap-heap.”

“The Communists, following Hegel, speak of humanity and its future as of some monolithic individuality. I was attacking this illusion.”

“It was as though some stubborn god spent their time in an immutable and absurd balancing act between life and death, prosperity and poverty.”

“The power he exercises is no more dictatorial than, for example, Roosevelt's was.”

“Insects were scurrying about in the shade cast by the grass, and the lawn was a huge monotonous forest of thousands of little green blades, all equal, all alike, hiding the world from each other. Anguished, she thought, "I don't want to be just another blade of grass."”

“Science 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.”

“Try to stay a man amongst men … There's no other hope for you.”

“Each of us is responsible for everything and to every human being.”

“No woman should be authorized to stay at home to raise her children. Society should be totally different. Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one. It is a way of forcing women in a certain direction.”

“Since it is the Other within us who is old, it is natural that the revelation of our age should come to us from outside — from others. We do not accept it willingly.”

“Is this kind of ethics individualistic or not? Yes, if one means by that that it accords to the individual an absolute value and that it recognizes in him alone the power of laying the foundations of his own existence. It is individualism in the sense in which the wisdom of the ancients, the Christian ethics of salvation, and the Kantian ideal of virtue also merit this name; it is opposed to the totalitarian doctrines which raise up beyond man the mirage of Mankind. But it is not solipsistic, since the individual is defined only by his relationship to the world and to other individuals; he exists only by transcending himself, and his freedom can be achieved only through the freedom of others. He justifies his existence by a movement which, like freedom, springs from his heart but which leads outside of him.
This individualism does not lead to the anarchy of personal whim. Man is free; but he finds his law in his very freedom. First, he must assume his freedom and not flee it by a constructive movement: one does not exist without doing something; and also by a negative movement which rejects oppression for oneself and others.”

“What should a society be, so that in his last years a man might still be a man?
The answer is simple: he would always have to have been treated as a man. By the fate that it allots to its members who can no longer work, society gives itself away — it has always looked upon them as so much material. Society confesses that as far as it is concerned, profit is the only thing that counts, and that its "humanism" is mere window-dressing. In the nineteenth century the ruling classes explicitly equated the proletariat with barbarism. The struggles of the workers succeeded in making the proletariat part of mankind once more. But only in so far as it is productive. Society turns away from the aged worker as though he belonged to another species. That is why the whole question is buried in a conspiracy of silence.”

“What has value in their eyes is never what is done for them; it's what they do for themselves.”

“We were two of a kind, and our relationship would endure as long as we did: but it could not make up entirely for the fleeting riches to be had from encounters with different people.”

“When an individual (or a group of individuals) is kept in a situation of inferiority, the fact is that he is inferior. But the significance of the verb to be must be rightly understood here; it is in bad faith to give it a static value when it really has the dynamic Hegelian sense of "to have become." Yes, women on the whole are today inferior to men; that is, their situation affords them fewer possibilities. The question is: should that state of affairs continue?
Many men hope that it will continue; not all have given up the battle.”