If you live long enough, you'll see that every victory turns into a defeat.
Simone De BeauvoirRead
I've always been keenly aware of the passing of time. I've always thought that I was old. Even when I was twelve, I thought it was awful to be thirty. I felt that something was lost. At the same time, I was aware of what I could gain, and certain periods of my life have taught me a great deal. But, in spite of everything, I've always been haunted by the passing of time and by the fact that death keeps closing in on us.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects on the awareness of time passing and the simultaneous feelings of loss and gain throughout life.
Simone De Beauvoir expresses a deep awareness of the passage of time and the inevitable approach of death. From a young age, she felt the burden of aging and the loss of youth, yet she also acknowledges the valuable lessons learned during different stages of life. This duality reveals a tension between the melancholy of time lost and the acceptance of growth and knowledge gained.
Themes
TimeAwarenessLifeLossGainDeath
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the importance of living in the moment.
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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