by Simone de Beauvoir
about to start it at least! any thoughts welcome ๐ค
Sep 26, 2024
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dont really know the vibe of recommending one of the most famous books ever but! i do know how to make a case for this recommendation.
despite being seminal and well known and influential i doubt many people have taken on the 750 page endeavour that is the second sex by simone de beauvoir. luckily, i have familiarity with long paged and long prosed odysseys and can say with (little, but mighty) experience that when you a read challenging literary text it eventually becomes- not challenging! and when you read a very long challenging literary text u might be a couple hudnred pages deep and only then start to get it. it's gratifying in that way. because u have spent time agonosing but you eventually learn that slow prose forces you to stop and think and process. so yes, feminism. many of us are accquainted with it but this is a medium which will make you meditate on it. truly, an elucidatory experience. even with 70 years and a bit of water between us i feel me and mrs de beavouir are tapping into the same wavelength. cus another thing abt these older books is they were really thinking! she was writing to the heart of life! and now no body write anything subsustantial about anything! so, study this study of the second sex- take a month or two. sit with it, read alognside it. muse and let the prose take u in - i truly implore u to.
Feb 26, 2025
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I've been reading Simone Weil and I'm glad I found this book when I did. I really needed it. I've been feeling weighed down by the state of the world and family tragedies and dramas. But this book has helped to put some things back into perspective.
Here are some choice excerpts:
- "The tendency to spread evil beyond oneself: I still have it! Beings and things are not sacred enough to me. May I never sully anything even though I be utterly transformed into mud. To sully nothing, even in thought. Even in my worst moments I would not destroy a Greek statue or a fresco by Giotto. Why anything else then? Why, for example, a moment in the life of a human being who could have been happy for that moment?"
- "A king can pay out only imaginary rewards most of the time, or he would be insolvent. It is the same with religion at a certain level. Instead of receiving the smile of Louis XIV, we invent a god who smiles on us."
- "The future is a filler of void places. Sometimes the past also plays this part ('I used to be,' 'I once did this or that...'). But there are other cases when affliction makes the thought of happiness intolerable; then in robs the sufferer of his past.... The past and the future hinder the wholesome effect of affliction by providing an unlimited field for imaginary elevation. That is why the renunciation of the past and future is the first of all renunciations."
-"A person who is passionately fond of music may quite well be a perverted personโbut I should find it hard to believe this of anyone who thirsted for Gregorian chanting."
- "It is a fault to wish to be understood before we have made ourselves clear to ourselves. It is to seek pleasures in friendships, and pleasures which are not deserved. It is something which corrupts even more than love. You would sell your soul for friendship. // Learn to thrust friendship aside, or rather the dream of friendship. To desire friendship is a great fault. Friendship should be a gratuitous joy like those afforded by art or life. We must refuse it so that we may be worthy to receive it."
-"Suffering is nothing, apart from the relationship between the past and the future, but what is more real for man than this relationship? It is reality itself. // The future. We go on thinking it will come until the moment when we think it will never come."
-"Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer."
-"To love our neighbor as ourselves does not mean that we should love all people equally, for I do not have an equal love for all modes of existence of myself. Nor does it mean that we should never make them suffer, for I do not refuse to make myself suffer. But we should have with each person the relationship of one conception of the universe to another conception of the universe, and not to a part of the universe."
-"Power (and money, power's master key) is a means at its purest. For that very reason it is the supreme end for all those who have not understood."
Apr 19, 2025
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my favorite book
existential.
its a little slow in the beginning but stick with it, it gets wild.
leaves a lot to think about
can be depressing if u internalize it too much
Jan 4, 2025
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- my lore is interesting
- people enjoy being around me
- my anecdotes are unique
- i donโt scare people
- my best is actually good
- i can perform hard tasks
- my confidence isnโt a facade
- i am a bundle of joy
May 6, 2024
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Builds character, confidence, and discipline. The only person in charge of your mess is you! When you get home you can turn the performance off! Naked time anytime!
Apr 17, 2025