If you live long enough, you'll see that every victory turns into a defeat.
Simone De BeauvoirRead
It must be said in addition that the men with the most scrupulous respect for embryonic life are also those who are most zealous when it comes to condemning adults to death in war.
Interpretation
The quote critiques the contradiction in valuing life at different stages, highlighting hypocrisy in views on life and death.
Simone De Beauvoir points out the inconsistency in societal attitudes toward life, contrasting the respect given to embryonic life with the disregard for adult life in the context of war. This reflects a deeper philosophical examination of how value is assigned to life based on context and circumstance, suggesting a need for a more cohesive ethic regarding the sanctity of life.
In practice
In a debate about pro-life policies, this quote can emphasize the need for consistent ethical standards.
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 … 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.
The memory of a particular image is but regret for a particular moment.
The worshiper is the father of the gods.
Listen to the Exhortation of the Dawn! Look to this Day! For it is Life, the very Life of Life. In its brief course lie all the Verities and Realities of your Existence. The Bliss of Growth, The Glory of Action, The Splendor of Beauty; For Yesterday is but a Dream, And To-morrow is only a Vision; But To-day well lived makes Every Yesterday a Dream of Happiness, And every Tomorrow a Vision of Hope. Look well therefore to this Day! Such is the Salutation of the Dawn!
His words even imply that philanthropy has deeper depths than is generally realized. The great emotions of compassion and mercy are traced to Him; there is more to human deeds than the doers are aware. He identified every act of kindness as an expression of sympathy with Himself. All kindnesses are either done explicitly or implicitly in His name, or they are refused explicitly or implicitly in His name.
What we do not make conscious emerges later as fate.
The key fallacy of so called gun control laws is that such laws do not in fact control guns. They simply disarm law abiding citizens, while people bent on violence find firearms readily available.
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