Simone de Beauvoir Quotes

So it is necessary that we should learn to be alone.

In life we often look to others for simple, but difficult answers, despite the fact that we have those answers ourselves.

It's only when you're alone that you realize where you are. You have nothing to fall back on except your own resources.

Sometimes people look to others for answers they can find within themselves. I don't really want the responsibility of being the guy they look to.

In solitude the mind gains strength and learns to lean upon itself.

For me, a happy ending is not everything works out just right and there is a big bow, it's more coming to a place where a person has a clear vision of his or her own life in a way that enables them to kind of throw down their crutches and walk.

Be able to be alone. Lose not the advantage of solitude, and the society of thyself.

My family advocates doing what fulfills your soul. They've always said, 'You're a big girl; figure it out on your own.'

To leave in search of yourself, of your real needs, is easier when you don't have to justify yourself to anyone, when there are not too many people bestowing you their attention.

My real guru are my experiences in life - the realisation that you are alone in this world came very early to me.

In silence - and in self-defense - I figured things out in my own little way.

You have to find it. No one else can find it for you.

Down to Gehenna or up to the Throne, / He travels the fastest who travels alone.

I've realised that I actually like being by myself.

Any man who is really a man must learn to be alone in the midst of others, to think alone for others, and, if necessary, against others.

The Virgin (and I'm not speaking here of a sexual virgin) is the one whose search springs from her complete independence, and everything she learns is the fruit of her ability to face challenges alone.

You cannot learn what you are made of if you rely on anyone or anything else to help you.

The New England spirit does not seek solutions in a crowd; raw light and solitariness are less dreaded than welcomed as enhancers of our essential selves.

... when I am really alone some power seems to grow in me. ... Conjugality made me think of a three-legged race, where two people cannot go fast and keep tripping each other because their two legs are tied together.

At the bottom no one in life can help anyone else in life; this one experiences over and over in every conflict and every perplexity: that one is alone. That isn't as bad as it may first appear; and again it is the best thing in life that each should have everything in himself; his fate, his future, his whole expanse and world.

The spiritual differs from the religious in being able to endure isolation. The rank of a spiritual person is proportionate to his strength for enduring isolation, whereas we religious people are constantly in need of 'the others,' the herd. We religious folks die, or despair, if we are not reassured by being in the assembly, of the same opinion as the congregation, and so on. But the Christianity of the New Testament is precisely related to the isolation of the spiritual man.

I think we have to go through everything we go through in our life, and I believe my purpose in life was to teach self-reliance. So I had the experience of relying on myself very early in life in order to have that knowing, because otherwise I would've just read about it. I think of it now as a great advantage that I had. It certainly taught me to rely upon myself at a very young age. And that's what I've been teaching since I was a little boy.

But if I must be alone, I refuse to be alone as if it were something weak and distasteful, like convalescence.

Me, myself and I. That's all I got in the end.

No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.