Simone de Beauvoir

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

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

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

One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.

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

No one is more arrogant toward women, more aggressive or scornful, than the man who is anxious about his virility.

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

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.

I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth - and truth rewarded me.

It is not in giving life but in risking life that man is raised above the animal; that is why superiority has been accorded in humanity not to the sex that brings forth but to that which kills.

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.

One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation and compassion.