Home > Work > Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter
41 " كنت أعتقد أن الانسان ليس بوسعه أن يحب من غير ان يكره "
― Simone de Beauvoir , Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter
42 " لم تفتح لي الفلسفة السماء ولم ترسني في الأرض. "
43 " تعلمت ألم الوجود، لقد نُفيت من جنة الطفولة و لم أجد مكاناً بين الكبار . "
44 " كم هو كليّ حضور الإنسان،وكم هو جذري غيابه. "
45 " البشر ليسوا أرواحاً وانما هم أجساد فريسة الحاجة ملقاة في مغامرة قاسية "
46 " Literature takes its revenge on reality by making it the slave of fiction. "
47 " One afternoon Clairaut came over to me with a book in his hand: “Mademoiselle de Beauvoir,” he began, in an inquisitorial tone, “what do you make of Brochard who is of the opinion that Aristotle’s God would be able to experience sexual pleasure?” Herbaud cast him a disdainful look: “I should hope so, for his sake,” he haughtily replied. "
48 " I've no personality,' I would tell myself. My curiosity embraced everything; I believed in an absolute truth, in the need for moral law; my thoughts adapted themselves to their objects; if occasionally one of them took me by surprise, it was because it reflected something that was surprising. I preferred good to evil and despised that which should be despised. I could find no trace of my own subjectivity. I had wanted myself to be boundless, and I had become as shapeless as the infinite. The paradox was that I became aware of this deficiency at the very moment when I discovered my individuality; my universal aspiration had seemed to me until then to exist in its own right; but now it had become a character trait: 'Simone is interested in everything.' I found myself limited by my refusal to be limited. "
49 " I was no longer a vacant mind, an abstracted gaze, but the turbulent fragrance of the waving grain, the intimate smell of the heather moors, the dense heat of noon or the shiver of twilight; I was heavy; yet I was as vapour in the blue airs of summer and knew no bounds. "
50 " Peut-être vas-tu me trouver ridicule, mais je me mépriserais de n'oser l'être jamais. "
51 " La stupidità ci faceva ridere, era uno dei nostri grandi motivi di spasso, ma aveva anche qualcosa di spaventevole. Se avesse prevalso, non avremmo più avuto il diritto di pensare, di prendere in giro, di provare veri desideri, veri piaceri. Bisognava combatterla o rinunciare a vivere. "
52 " If I had rediscovered in Heaven, amplified to infinity, the monstrous alliance of fragility and implacability, of caprice and artificial necessity which had oppressed me since my birth, rather than worship Him I would have chosen damnation. "
53 " I was still keenly aware as in my childhood of the inexplicable nature of my presence here on earth; where had I come from here; where was I going? I often thought about these things with a kind of stupefied horror and used to fill my diary with long self-communings "
54 " I told myself that as long as there were books I could be sure of being happy. "
55 " La scrittura esige virtù scoraggianti, sforzi, pazienza; è un'attività solitaria in cui il pubblico esiste solo come speranza. "
56 " In the afternoons I would sit out on the balcony outside the dining-room; there, level with the tops of the trees that shaded the boulevard Raspail, I would watch the passers-by. "
57 " any reproach made by my mother, and even her slightest frown was a threat to my security: without her approval, I no longer felt I had any right to live. "
58 " But I know my only defense is to answer, “I think it because it is true,” thereby eliminating my subjectivity; "
59 " She compensated for this sense of inferiority by making fun of everything. I did not notice it then, but she never made fun of my faults, only of my virtues; "
60 " but there was one book in which I believed I had caught a glimpse of my future self: Little Women, by Louisa M. Alcott. "