D. Simone Quotes

Defending the truth is not something one does out of a sense of duty or to allay guilt complexes, but is a reward in itself.

He never bore a grudge against anyone he wronged.

Isn't that why we're put on this earth to begin with, to make it a better place? It's not a religious quest; it's a humanitarian one.

True definition of science: the study of the beauty of the world.

We have to endure the discordance between imagination and fact. It is better to say, “I am suffering,” than to say, “This landscape is ugly.

But women do not say 'We', except at some congress of feminists or similar formal demonstration; men say 'women', and women use the same word in referring to themselves.

I cannot be angry at God, in whom I do not believe.

One is not born a genius, one becomes a genius; and the feminine situation has up to the present rendered this becoming practically impossible.

Many things would be changed for Americans if they would only admit that there is ill-luck in this world and that misfortune is not a priori a crime.

Patience is one of those feminine qualities which have their origin in our oppression but should be preserved after our liberation.

I want to try making things right because picking up the pieces is way better than leaving them the way they are.

Society cares for the individual only so far as he is profitable.

The most important part of teaching is to teach what it is to know.

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

Beauty is a fruit which we look at without trying to seize it.

The world is God's language to us.

Love isn't about honesty. It's about protecting the people you love from things that will hurt them.

I also am other than what I imagine myself to be. To know this is forgiveness.

The emancipation of women must be the work of women themselves, independent of the class struggle.

Justice can never be done in the midst of injustice.

Music is my drug, the one thing that makes me numb.

It's pure instinct that makes me rebel every time someone tries to control my life and hand out more rules.

Nothing can have as its destination anything other than its origin. The contrary idea, the idea of progress, is poison.

We are like plants which have the one choice of being in or out of the light.

We have to try to cure our faults by attention and not by will.

Each of us is responsible for everything and to every human being.

A couple who go on living together merely because that was how they began, without any other reason: was that what we were turning into?

From the beginning, it has been a no-no for a black man to touch a white woman.

The extreme greatness of Christianity lies in the fact that it does not seek a supernatural remedy for suffering but a supernatural use for it.

I don't like to go to strange places. I was in Italy for about five hours on my way to Africa.

Culture is an instrument wielded by professors to manufacture professors, who when their turn comes will manufacture professors.

Since I was three I've been playing the piano. I've been onstage.

If we forgive God for his crime against us, which is to have made us finite creatures, He will forgive our crime against him, which is that we are finite creatures.

If Marilyn is in love with my husband it proves she has good taste, for I am in love with him too.

The mysteries of faith are degraded if they are made into an object of affirmation and negation, when in reality they should be an object of contemplation.

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

Evil being the root of mystery, pain is the root of knowledge.

Why does one exist? That's not my problem. One does exist. The thing to do is to take no notice but go at it on the run and to keep on going right on until you die.

A Pharisee is someone who is virtuous out of obedience to the Great Beast.

There is no detachment where there is no pain. And there is no pain endured without hatred or lying unless detachment is present too.

Compassion directed toward oneself is true humility.

It is not my business to think about myself. My business is to think about God. It is for God to think about me.

I try to swim every damn day I can, and I've learned to scuba dive and snorkel.

No existence can be validly fulfilled if it is limited to itself.

Only a woman can write what it is to feel as a woman, to be a woman.

Capabilities are clearly manifested only when they have been realized.

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 others. We do not accept it willingly.

It is not religion but revolution which is the opium of the people.

I get very invested in characters, it's the only way I find that I can write a book and really make it work.

A test of what is real is that it is hard and rough. Joys are found in it, not pleasure. What is pleasant belongs to dreams.