Another saying comes to mind, from the ascerbic G B Shaw - 'youth is wasted on the young'. (Something to which I can personally attest, having wasted a fair bit of mine.)

Me too. Wish I could get the first 30 years back.

Me too. Wish I could get the first 30 years back — Rob J Kennedy

I find it hard to trust those who haven’t wasted their youth. I wish I could have pissed about forever but I was forced into a real job.

“Real youth is that which exerts itself in forging ahead to an adult future, not that which lives confined with accommodating resignation in the limits assigned to it” — Rob J Kennedy

I find her syntax somewhat tortured (perhaps the translation) I tried to read her in the 1980’s but found her largely incomprehensible.

What do you like about her ideas?

Hi Tom,

I'm learning French and all French translations to English are never word for word, they can't be. So yes, translations often distort.

I like SbDs writing and thoughts. Her ideas are not philosophical, as she said many times, "Sartre is the philosopher”. I think the best way into her non-fiction is through her diaries. I've read America Day by Day and herWar Diary.

I said earlier that, "I can tell how aligned their thoughts are to mine", because my thoughts on many subjects were aligned to her’s even before I ever heard of her. Take this example, it's about something I hate, small talk.

Simone de Beauvoir framed this problem well in her America, Day by Day diary written in 1947. After a heated discussion one day with people she has just met, and whereupon meeting them the next day, she noted, “it is not customary in the country to push discussions very far. Polite speech curbs passions; if some sharp difference of opinion suddenly threatened to reveal itself, the conversation ceased and they fell back on polite formulas. We misunderstood each other in our politeness: they agreed to everything I said”.

I had this thought well before I ever read her diary. There are many other instances.

What I also find amazing is the number of ideas she had, well, about almost everything. I read somewhere that Sartre wrote 17 pages of text for every day he was alive. SdB would be the same I reckon.