If you live long enough, you'll see that every victory turns into a defeat.
Simone De BeauvoirRead
…but all day long I would be training myself to think, to understand, to criticize, to know myself; I was seeking for the absolute truth: this preoccupation did not exactly encourage polite conversation.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The pursuit of self-knowledge and truth can often lead to uncomfortable conversations.
Simone De Beauvoir reflects on the challenges and isolations that come from a deep quest for self-understanding and absolute truth. This intense focus on introspection and criticism might alienate one from casual social interactions, highlighting the tension between profound thinking and the expectations of polite society.
Themes
TruthSelf-KnowledgeIntrospectionConversationWisdom
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a psychology class discussion about self-awareness.
More from Simone De Beauvoir
All quotes →Two separate beings, in different circumstances, face to face in freedom and seeking justification of their existence through one another, will always live an adventure full of risk and promise." (p. 248)
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To catch a husband is an art; to hold him is a job.
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Sex pleasure in woman is a kind of magic spell; it demands complete abandon; if words or movements oppose the magic of caresses, the spell is broken.
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As long as there have been men and they have lived, they have all felt this tragic ambiguity of their condition, but as long as there have been philosophers and they have thought, most of them have tried to mask it.
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Few 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 BeauvoirRead
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