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.
Our country is that spot to which our heart is bound.
For the record, prejudices can kill, and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own for the children, and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is that these things cannot be confined to the Twilight Zone.
If I deny the authority of the State when it presents my tax bill, it will soon take and waste all my property, and so harass me and my children without end. This is hard, this makes it impossible for a man to live honestly, and at the same time comfortably, in outward respects.
The truth is that life is hard and dangerous; that he who seeks his own happiness does not find it; that he who is weak must suffer; that he who demands love will be disappointed; that he who is greedy will not be fed; that he who seeks peace will find strife; that truth is only for the brave; that joy is only for him who does not fear to be alone; that life is only for the one who is not afraid to die.
I want to be important. By being different. And these girls are all the same.
There's a taste in my mouth and it's no taste at all.
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