Simone de Beauvoir Quotes

If you cannot solve it, it is not a problem - it is reality.

If there is no way out, the best course of action is to find a way further in.

While we should never give up our principles, we must also realize that we cannot maintain our principles unless we survive.

I don't know who made the Earth. I woke up one morning, and it's here. I make the best of it.

The fact we exist merely means we exist. That's all it means.

Meet the challenges of the time.

I've always said to everyone that ever worked for me, if you get too dug in on a position, the facts change, and you don't change to adapt to the facts, you will never be successful.

Every story of change there is always someone who didn't have the resources or the network they needed and did something anyway.

And there is no living creature, though the whims of eons had put its eyes on boggling stalks and clamped it in a carapace, diminished it to a pinpoint and given it a taste for mud and stuck it down a well or hid it under a stone, but that creature will live on if it can.

But what is life if you don't live it?

A soft, easy life is not worth living, if it impairs the fibre of brain and heart and muscle. We must dare to be great; and we must realize that greatness is the fruit of toil and sacrifice and high courage... For us is the life of action, of strenuous performance of duty; let us live in the harness, striving mightily; let us rather run the risk of wearing out than rusting out.

It is inconceivable that anything should be existing. It is not inconceivable that a lot of people should also be existing who are not interested in the fact that they exist. But it is certainly very odd.

Victims recite problems, leaders provide solutions.

I don't know if I was put on this Earth for a purpose or not. But I'm fairly confident that I'll be taken off of it for one.

... I stayed because running seemed too strange and too complicated. All I knew was how to fall back, find a patch of solid ground, and then dig my heels in and fight to start over.

What keeps you going isn't some fine destination but just the road you're on, and the fact that you know how to drive. You keep your eyes open, you see this damned-to-hell world you got born into, and you ask yourself, 'What life can I live that will let me breathe in & out and love somebody or something and not run off screaming into the woods?

Put one dumb foot in front of the other and course-correct as you go.

As long as you and I are still breathing, we have a purpose to serve

A wise man once said that all human activity is a form of play. And the highest form of play is the search for Truth, Beauty and Love. What more is needed? Should there be a ‘meaning’ as well, that will be a bonus? If we waste time looking for life’s meaning, we may have no time to live — or to play.

Life is not fair. And you have to choose your battles, because there are some that you cannot win. If you're passionate about something, then you should pick up your flag and run with it.

Sometimes we behave as though there was something more important than life. But what?

Weakness or strength: you exist, that is strength. You don't know where you are going or why you are going, go in everywhere, answer everyone. No one will kill you, any more than if you were a corpse.

You'll never know why you exist, but you'll always allow yourselves to be easily persuaded to take life seriously.

Run when I can, walk when I cannot run, and creep when I cannot walk.

Run when you have to, fight when you must, rest when you can.