Simone de Beauvoir Quotes

And now brothers, I will ask you a terrible question, and God knows I ask it also of myself. Is the truth beyond all truths, beyond the stars, just this: that to live without him is the real death, that to die with him the only life?

My favorite word is existentialism. I can't say it and I'm not quite sure what it means.

I took a test in Existentialism. I left all the answers blank and got 100.

It is here that we encounter the central theme of existentialism: to live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering.

I think life's an irrational obsession.

Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human.

Life is wasted on the living.

You don't waste your entire life waiting to go back to dust.

'Hamlet' is one of the most dangerous things ever set down on paper. All the big, unknowable questions like what it is to be a human being; the difference between sanity and insanity; the meaning of life and death; what's real and not real. All these subjects can literally drive you mad.

Everything has been figured out, except how to live.

Any art worthy of its name should address 'life', 'man', 'nature', 'death' and 'tragedy'.

Nothing is a matter of life and death except life and death.

To be, or not to be, that is the question.

My search not only failed, but I convinced myself that all those who had searched like myself had failed also, and come like me to the despairing conviction that the only absolute knowledge man can possess is this—that life is without a meaning.

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?

We lay on our backs looking at the ceiling and wondering what God had wrought when he made life so sad and disinclined.

I have always been happy. Even if I had been more honest with regard to myself at that moment I should still have written La Nausee.

I don't know the meaning of life. I don't know why we are here. I think life is full of anxieties and fears and tears. It has a lot of grief in it, and it can be very grim. And I do not want to be the one who tries to tell somebody else what life is all about. To me it's a complete mystery.

Mann was profoundly influenced by two philosophers, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, who returned to the most ancient of all philosophical questions - "How to live?" - and whose writings offered novel perspectives for considering that question (much more perspective-offering than rigorous argument!)

The Gay Science, section 108

Existentialism isn't so atheistic that it wears itself out showing that God doesn't exist. Rather, it declares that even if God did exist, that would change nothing.

Through the ages, man's main concern was life after death. Today, for the first time, we find we must ask questions about whether there will be life before death.

It's not always easy to distinguish between existentialism and a bad mood.

Life is the farce we are all forced to endure.

The man who regards his own life and that of his fellow-creatures as meaningless is not merely unfortunate but almost disqualified for life.