It's frightening to think that you mark your children merely by being yourself.... It seems unfair. You can't assume the responsib...ility for everything you do--or don't do.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Since it is the Other within us who is old, it is natural that the revelation of our age should come to us from outside--from othe...rs. We do not accept it willingly.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In order for the artist to have a world to express he must first be situated in this world, oppressed or oppressing, resigned or r...ebellious, a man among men.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The advantage man enjoys, which makes itself felt from his childhood, is that his vocation as a human being in no way runs counter... to his destiny as a male. Through his identification of phallus and transcendence, it turns out that his social and spiritual successes endow him with a virile prestige. He is not divided. Whereas it is required of woman that in order to realize her femininity she must make herself object and prey, which is to say that she must renounce her claims as a sovereign subject. It is this conflict that especially marks the situation of the emancipated woman. She refuses to confine herself to her role as female, because she will not accept mutilation; but it would also be a mutilation to repudiate her sex. Man is a human being with sexuality; woman is a complete individual, equal to the male, only if she too is a human being with sexuality. To renounce her femininity is to renounce a part of her humanity.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The curse which lies upon marriage is that too often the individuals are joined in their weakness rather than in their strength--e...ach asking from the other instead of finding pleasure in giving. It is even more deceptive to dream of gaining through the child a plenitude, a warmth, a value, which one is unable to create for oneself; the child brings joy only to the woman who is capable of disinterestedly desiring the happiness of another, to one who without being wrapped up in self seeks to transcend her own existence.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Sex pleasure in woman ... is a kind of magic spell; it demands complete abandon; if words or movements oppose the magic of caresse...s, the spell is broken.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Between women love is contemplative; caresses are intended less to gain possession of the other than gradually to re-create the se...lf through her; separateness is abolished, there is no struggle, no victory, no defeat; in exact reciprocity each is at once subject and object, sovereign and slave; duality become mutuality.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is old age, rather than death, that is to be contrasted with life. Old age is life's parody, whereas death transforms life into... a destiny: in a way it preserves it by giving it the absolute dimension. ... Death does away with time.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »