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But I was brought up on convent morals and paternal nationalism, I was getting bogged down in contradictions.

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Girls are weighed down by restrictions, boys with demands - two equally harmful disciplines.

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I am too intelligent, too demanding, and too resourceful for anyone to be able to take charge of me entirely. No one knows me or loves me completely. ...more

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The point is not for women simply to take power out of men’s hands, since that wouldn’t change anything about the world. It’s a question precisely of ...more

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I was too much of an extremist to be able to live under the eye of God and at the same time say both yes and no to life

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At night I would climb the steps to the Sacre-Coeur, and I would watch Paris, that futile oasis, scintillating in the wilderness of space. I would wee...more

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Ethics is the triumph of freedom over facticity.

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Regardless of the staggering dimensions of the world about us, the density of our ignorance, the risks of catastrophes to come, and our individual wea...more

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Scriassine studied me in turn. "You're not so dumb, you know. Generally I dislike intelligent women, maybe because they're not intelligent enough. The...more

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Taking without being taken in the anguish of becoming prey is the dangerous game of adolescent feminine sexuality.

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One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.

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; the man who does not "understand" a woman is happy to replace his subjective deficiency with an objective resistance; instead of admitting his ignor...more

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The younger and healthier a woman is and the more her new and glossy body seems destined for eternal freshness, the less useful is artifice; but the c...more

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The little girl feels that her body is escaping her, that it is no longer the clear expression of her individuality: it becomes foreign to her; and at...more

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: woman is an eminently poetic reality since man projects onto her everything he is not resolved to be.