Reader > Reader's Quotes

“Legislators, priests, philosophers, writers, ans scientists have striven to show that the subordinate position of woman is willed in heaven and advantageous on earth.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

“A woman alone always seems a little unusual; it is not true that men respect women: they respect each other through their women—wives, mistresses, “kept” women; when masculine protection no longer extends over her, woman is disarmed before a superior caste that is aggressive, sneering, or hostile. As an “erotic perversion,”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

“One is not born, but rather becomes a woman.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

“biology alone cannot provide an answer to the question that concerns us: why is woman the Other? The question is how, in her, nature has been taken on in the course of history; the question is what humanity has made of the human female.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

“Authentic love must be founded on reciprocal recognition of two freedoms...”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

“Doomed to procreation and secondary tasks, stripped of her practical importance and her mystical prestige, woman becomes no more than a servant.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

“One is not born a woman, one becomes one.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

“...every time she acts like a human being, she is said to be imitating the male.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

“Likewise, the most mediocre of males believes himself a demigod next to women.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

“...her wings are cut and then she is blamed for not knowing how to fly.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

“No one is more arrogant toward women, more aggressive or scornful, than the man who is anxious about his virility.”
― Simone de Beauvoir , The Second Sex

“The body is not a thing, it is a situation: it is our grasp on the world and our sketch of our project”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

“Women's mutual understanding comes from the fact that they identify themselves with each other; but for the same reason each is against the others.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

“...counselling man to treat her as a slave while persuading her that she is a queen.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

“I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“If you expect nothing from somebody you are never disappointed.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“Kiss me, and you will see how important I am.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing.”
― sylvia plath

“I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad. Or I can go mad by ricocheting in between.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“let me live, love, and say it well in good sentences”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell. I'll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“I desire the things which will destroy me in the end.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“We should meet in another life, we should meet in air, me and you.”
― Sylvia Plath

“To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is a bad dream.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“I am still so naïve; I know pretty much what I like and dislike; but please, don’t ask me who I am. A passionate, fragmentary girl, maybe?”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“Perhaps some day I'll crawl back home, beaten, defeated. But not as long as I can make stories out of my heartbreak, beauty out of sorrow.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“I don’t care about anyone, and the feeling is quite obviously mutual.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“I felt wise and cynical as all hell.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“I want to be important. By being different. And these girls are all the same.”
― Sylvia Plath