If you live long enough, you'll see that every victory turns into a defeat.
Simone De BeauvoirRead
I am incapable of conceiving infinity, and yet I do not accept finity. I want this adventure that is the context of my life to go on without end.
Interpretation
The speaker grapples with the concepts of infinity and finity, expressing a desire for an endless journey in life.
This quote reflects the existential struggle of understanding the limits of existence while yearning for something boundless. Simone De Beauvoir highlights a paradox where, despite recognizing the finite nature of life, there remains an inherent desire for an infinite adventure, symbolizing the human spirit's quest for meaning and continuity in an otherwise limited reality.
In practice
During a graduation speech to inspire students about their future.
If you live long enough, you'll see that every victory turns into a defeat.
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)
To catch a husband is an art; to hold him is a job.
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.
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.
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 β¦ Eating, sleeping, cleaning β 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.
Dreams don't deal in time. Time doesn't count.
An ostentatious man will rather relate a blunder or an absurdity he has committed, than be debarred from talking of his own dear person.
Wrong life cannot be lived rightly.
The noblest contribution which any man can make for the benefit of posterity, is that of character. The richest bequest which any man can leave to the youth of his native land, is that of a shining, spotless example.
Ahimsa is the attribute of the soul, and therefore, to be practiced by everybody in all affairs of life. If it cannot be practiced in all departments, it has no practical value.
A human being is part of a whole called by us the universe.
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