Who really said it

I am too intelligent, too demanding, and too resourceful for anyone to be able to take charge of me entirely

Q: Did Simone de Beauvoir say "I am too intelligent, too demanding, and too resourceful for anyone to be able to take charge of me entirely"?

Yes. These are Beauvoir's own words, written in her student diary — the Cahiers de jeunesse, 1926–1930. The French original reads 'Je suis trop intelligente, trop exigeante et trop riche pour que personne puisse se charger de moi entièrement… Je n'ai que moi,' and the popular English 'too resourceful' renders her 'trop riche.' The genuine attribution is often wrongly sourced to The Second Sex.

Written by Simone de Beauvoir 1908–1986 · French existentialist philosopher, novelist & feminist theorist

Verified In copyright

These are Beauvoir’s own words, written in her student diary — the Cahiers de jeunesse, 1926–1930. The French original reads ‘Je suis trop intelligente, trop exigeante et trop riche pour que personne puisse se charger de moi entièrement… Je n’ai que moi,’ and the popular English ‘too resourceful’ renders her ‘trop riche.’ The genuine attribution is often wrongly sourced to The Second Sex.

Last verified 8 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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“I am too intelligent, too demanding, and too resourceful for anyone to be able to take charge of me entirely” Simone de Beauvoir, Cahiers de jeunesse, 1926–1930 (Gallimard, 2008); displayed English is an uncredited popular translation of the French

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by Éditions Gallimard and the Estate of Simone de Beauvoir (Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir); English translation © University of Illinois Press). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

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In context

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Provenance

The source

Work: Cahiers de jeunesse, 1926–1930
Type: Student diary (written 1926–1930; first published Gallimard, 2008)
Translation: English: the displayed wording is an uncredited popular translation of the French. A scholarly English edition of the early diary — Diary of a Philosophy Student, Vols. 1–2 (1926–29), trans. Barbara Klaw (Univ. of Illinois Press, 2006, 2019) — covers only 1926–29 and is not verified to contain this entry.
Author: Simone de Beauvoir

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. I have only myself. diary

French original: “Je suis trop intelligente, trop exigeante et trop riche pour que personne puisse se charger de moi entièrement. Personne ne me connaît ni ne m’aime tout entière. Je n’ai que moi…”

Cahiers de jeunesse, 1926–1930 (source diary)

How we traced it

The line is authentic Beauvoir: the French original appears among quotations from her diary Cahiers de jeunesse, 1926–1930 ↗.
The full French passage ↗ is credited to that same student diary, ending ‘Je n’ai que moi.’
The diary was published in French by Gallimard (2008); the shown English is an uncredited popular translation of the French ‘trop riche’ original, not a verified published rendering. A scholarly English edition covers only the early notebooks — Diary of a Philosophy Student ↗, Vols. 1–2 (1926–29), trans. Barbara Klaw — and is not confirmed to contain this entry.

In copyright

Although Beauvoir wrote these lines as a student between 1926 and 1930, the diary was first published only in 2008 (Gallimard, Cahiers de jeunesse), and the English translation dates from 2006 onward — so both the French text and its translation are firmly in copyright, held by Gallimard/the Beauvoir estate and the University of Illinois Press respectively.

Fact-check

Genuine — but often mis-sourced

The words really are Beauvoir’s, so this is not a fabrication. The recurring error is about where they come from: they are pinned to her famous feminist works rather than to the youthful diary that actually contains them.

The Second Sex (1949) mis-sourced

Aggregators and listicles routinely file the line among quotations from The Second Sex, but it predates that treatise by roughly two decades and appears in her student diary, the Cahiers de jeunesse ↗.

Quote-aggregator sites unsourced

Most reposts (Goodreads, quote parks, Pinterest) give only the author’s name with no citation — e.g. this quotepark entry ↗ lists no book, letter or date.

The passage comes from Beauvoir’s Cahiers de jeunesse, 1926–1930 ↗, her Sorbonne-era diary, published by Gallimard in 2008 and translated into English as Diary of a Philosophy Student.

Context

Why it resonates

Written when Beauvoir was a philosophy student in her late teens and early twenties, the passage is a private declaration of self-sufficiency: too rich in inner life to be wholly possessed by anyone, resolved to live knowing ‘no one will help me to live.’ It reads as an early sketch of the fiercely independent thinker she became.

Because the sentiment fits her later feminism so neatly, the line is frequently swept up into lists of quotations from The Second Sex — but it predates that book by two decades and belongs to the diaries, not the treatise.

“I have only myself.”

A note on the wording

The French ‘trop riche’ (literally ‘too rich’) is usually Englished as ‘too resourceful,’ and ‘se charger de moi’ as ‘take charge of me’ — both reasonable renderings, which is why the widely shared English text is a genuine translation rather than a fabrication.

Explore

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More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

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Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Goodreads — French original & sourcegoodreads.com

The full French passage, attributed to Cahiers de jeunesse: 1926-1930.

Goodreads — Cahiers de jeunesse quotesgoodreads.com

Quote collection from the source diary, containing this passage in French.

Diary of a Philosophy Student (UI Press)press.uillinois.edu

The English translation of Beauvoir's 1926–27 student diary, trans. Barbara Klaw.

Simone de Beauvoir — Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org

Biography and bibliography of the author.

Simone de Beauvoir — Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

Sourced and attributed quotations for cross-checking.

The true author

About the author

Simone de Beauvoir

1908–1986 · French philosopher, novelist & feminist theorist

Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) was a French existentialist philosopher and writer, best known for The Second Sex (1949), a founding text of modern feminism. Long before that, as a philosophy student at the Sorbonne in the late 1920s, she kept intimate diaries wrestling with independence, solitude and self-worth — the notebooks published posthumously as Cahiers de jeunesse. This line comes from those youthful pages.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

Simone de Beauvoir, Cahiers de jeunesse, 1926–1930, ed. Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir (Paris: Gallimard, 2008). The displayed English is an uncredited popular translation of the French; the early notebooks appear in English as Diary of a Philosophy Student, Vols. 1–2 (1926–29), trans. Barbara Klaw (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006, 2019), which is not verified to contain this entry.

MLA (9th ed.)

Beauvoir, Simone de. Cahiers de jeunesse, 1926–1930. Edited by Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir, Gallimard, 2008.

APA (7th ed.)

Beauvoir, S. de. (2008). Cahiers de jeunesse, 1926–1930 (S. Le Bon de Beauvoir, Ed.). Gallimard.

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