If you live long enough, you'll see that every victory turns into a defeat.
Simone De BeauvoirRead
We must not confuse the present with the past. With regard to the past, no further action is possible.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes the importance of distinguishing the current moment from past actions, as one cannot change the past.
Simone De Beauvoir's quote highlights a crucial philosophical perspective: while the past shapes our experiences and identities, it should not dictate our present actions or decisions. By recognizing that the past is unchangeable, we can free ourselves to engage more fully with the present and make choices that reflect our current values and aspirations.
Themes
PresentPastActionChangePhilosophy
In practice
Example use cases
Using this quote in a motivational speech about personal growth and moving on.
More from Simone De Beauvoir
All quotes βTwo 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)
Simone De BeauvoirRead
To catch a husband is an art; to hold him is a job.
Simone De BeauvoirRead
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.
Simone De BeauvoirRead
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.
Simone De BeauvoirRead
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Debt is a prolific mother of folly and of crime.
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Although our intellect always longs for clarity and certainty, our nature often finds uncertainty fascinating.
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What should I have known or written had I been a quiet, mercantile politician or a lord in waiting? A man must travel, and turmoil, or there is no existence.
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Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.
Louis D. BrandeisRead
Pleasure is not the purpose of man's existence. Joy is.
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