“Retirement may be looked upon either as a prolonged holiday or as a rejection, a being thrown on to the scrap-heap.”

— Simone de Beauvoir, The Coming of Age (1970), Pt. I, Ch. 4

About Simone de Beauvoir

1908 – 1986

French existentialist philosopher and author of "The Second Sex".

“There is an element of failure in all success.”

“I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom.”

“Self-knowledge is no guarantee of happiness, but it is on the side of happiness and can supply the courage to fight for it.”

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”

“It is unlikely that the good of a snail should reside in its shell: so is it likely that the good of a man should?”

“In theory there is nothing to hinder our following what we are taught; but in life there are many things to draw us aside.”

“If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages princes' palaces.”

“That which makes the man no worse than he was makes his life no worse: it has no power to harm, without or within.”

“Always take the short cut; and that is the rational one. Therefore say and do everything according to soundest reason.”