Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with the absolute truth.
Simone de Beauvoir

Retirement may be looked upon either as a prolonged holiday or as a rejection, a being thrown on to the scrap-heap.
Simone de Beauvoir

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.
Simone de Beauvoir

Society cares for the individual only so far as he is profitable.
Simone de Beauvoir

Society, being codified by man, decrees that woman is inferior; she can do away with this inferiority only by destroying the male's superiority.
Simone de Beauvoir

The most mediocre of males feels himself a demigod as compared with women.
Simone de Beauvoir

The word love has by no means the same sense for both sexes, and this is one cause of the serious misunderstandings that divide them.
Simone de Beauvoir

The writer of originality, unless dead, is always shocking, scandalous; novelty disturbs and repels.
Simone de Beauvoir

This has always been a man's world, and none of the reasons that have been offered in explanation have seemed adequate.
Simone de Beauvoir

To catch a husband is an art; to hold him is a job.
Simone de Beauvoir

To make oneself an object, to make oneself passive, is a very different thing from being a passive object.
Simone de Beauvoir

What is an adult? A child blown up by age.
Simone de Beauvoir

When an individual is kept in a situation of inferiority, the fact is that he does become inferior.
Simone de Beauvoir

Why one man rather than another? It was odd. You find yourself involved with a fellow for life just because he was the one that you met when you were nineteen.
Simone de Beauvoir