Simone de Beauvoir Quotes

Real love moves freely in both directions. Don't waste your time on anything else.

You cannot convince people to love you. This is an absolute rule. No one will ever give you love because you want him or her to give it. Real love moves freely in both directions. Don’t waste your time on anything else.

A true conception of the relation of the sexes will not admit of conqueror and conquered; it knows of but one great thing; to give of one's self boundlessly, in order to find one's self richer, deeper, better.

These two criteria are like the pillars of true love: deeds, and the gift of self.

True love goes ever straight forward, not in its own strength, but esteeming itself as nothing. Then indeed we are truly happy. The cross is no longer a cross when there is no self to suffer under it.

I don't want you to love me, If you don't wanna love me for me.

One is as one is, and the love that can't encompass both is a poor sort of love.

Economized love is never real love.

Love is not obedience, conformity, or submission. It is a counterfeit love that is contingent upon authority, punishment, or reward. True love is respect and admiration, compassion and kindness, freely given by a healthy, unafraid human being.

I don't actually think “true love” is such a good term because love can only be true. If it isn't true it can't be love.

Love is a teacher, but one must know how to acquire it, for it is difficult to acquire, it is dearly bought, by long work over a long time, for one ought to love not for a chance moment but for all time. Anyone, even a wicked man, can love by chance.

I always loved you, and if one loves anyone, one loves the whole person, just as they are and not as one would like them to be. -Dolly

Real Love truthfully sees the flaws - and still really loves fully.

Limited love asks for possession of the beloved, but the unlimited asks only for itself.

When you love someone you love him as he is.

Love is not found in the market.

Love can only flourish as long as it is free and spontaneous; it tends to be killed by the thought that it is a duty. To say that it is your duty to love so-and-so is the surest way to cause you to hate him or her.

If you must choose between loving someone and acting so that they feel loved, always choose to love them.

So yes. It had flaws, but what does that matter when it comes to matters of the heart? We love what we love. Reason does not enter into it. In many ways, unwise love is the truest love. Anyone can love a thing because. That's as easy as putting a penny in your pocket. But to love something despite. To know the flaws and love them too. That is rare and pure and perfect.

A conditional love is nothing but an infatuation, sexuality. Unconditional is the only way love can be. Wherever a condition comes in, love disappears. It cannot live in bondage, and a condition gives it an imprisonment. Love can only live like the vast sky. Love knows no boundaries.

True love means you love the real person, not an ideal that you have in your head and superimpose over them. That's illusion and lies to me.

Suffering occurs when we want other people to love us in the way we imagine we want to be loved, and not in the way that love should manifest itself--free and untrammeled, guiding us with its force and driving us on.

There is no formula for generating the authentic warmth of love. It cannot be copied. You cannot talk yourself into it or rouse it by straining at the emotions or by dedicating yourself solemnly to the service of mankind. Everyone has love, but it can only come out when he is convinced of the impossibility and the frustration of trying to love himself. This conviction will not come through condemnations, through hating oneself, through calling self love bad names in the universe. It comes only in the awareness that one has no self to love.

If ever two were one, then surely we. If ever man were lov'd by wife, then thee; If ever wife was happy in a man, Compare with me, ye women, if you can I prize thy love more than whole mines of Gold. Or all the riches that the East doth hold. My love is such that rivers cannot quench, Nor ought but love from thee, give recompense. Thy love is such I can no way repay, The heavens reward thee manifold repay, Then while we live, in love let's so persevere That when we live no more, we may live ever.

Love shouldn't make a beggar of one. I wouldn't want love if I had to beg for it, to barter or qualify it. And I should despise it if anyone ever begged for my love. Love is something that must be given -- it can't be bought with words or pity, or even reason.