Quotes from Kate Chopin

Some people are born with a vital and responsive energy. It not only enables them to keep abreast of the times; it qualifies them to furnish in their own personality a good bit of the motive power to the mad pace.

There was no despondency when she fell asleep that night; nor was there hope when she awoke in the morning.

The voice of the sea speaks to the soul.

The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace.

The generous abundance of her passion, without guile or trickery, was like a white flame which penetrated and found response in depths of his own sensuous nature that had never yet been reached.

And Nature takes no account of moral consequences, of arbitrary conditions which we create, and which we feel obliged to maintain at any cost.

The peace and beauty of a spring day had descended upon the earth like a benediction.

There are some people who leave impressions not so lasting as the imprint of an oar upon the water.

You have been a very foolish boy, wasting your time dreaming of impossible things when you speak of Mr. Pontellier setting me free! I am no longer one of Mr. Pontelliere's possessions to dispose of or not. I give myself where I choose. If he were to say, 'Here Robert, take her and be happy; she is yours,' I should laugh at you both.

There would be no one there to live for her during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistance with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination.

There was no despondency when she fell asleep that night; nor was there hope when she awoke in the morning.

one who awakens gradually out of a dream, a delicious, grotesque, impossible dream, to feel again the realities pressing into her soul

At a very early period she had apprehended the instinctively the dual life - that outward existence which conforms, the inward life which questions.

Who can tell what metals the gods use in forging the subtle bond which we call sympathy, which we might as well call love.

Does he write to you? Never a line. Does he send you a message? Never a word. It is because he loves you, poor fool, and is trying to forget you, since you are not free to listen to him or to belong to him.

She had all her life long been accustomed to harbor thoughts and emotions which never voiced themselves.

When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease - of the joy that kills.

The morning was full of sunlight and hope.

In short, Mrs. Pontellier was beginning to realize her position in the universe as a human being, and to recongize her relations as an individual to the world within and about her. This may seem like a ponderous weight of wisdom to descend upon the soul of a young woman of twenty-eight - perhaps more wisdom than the Holy Ghost is usually pleased to vouchsafe to any woman.

I don't mind walking. I always feel so sorry for women who don't like to walk; they miss so much--so many rare little glimpses of life; and we women learn so little of life on the whole.

there would be no powerful will binding hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow creature…And yet she had loved him- sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in the face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being.

To be an artist includes much; one must possess many gift -absolute gifts- which have not been acquired by one's effort. And, moreover, to succeed, the artist must possess the courageous soul.

She was flushed and felt intoxicated with the sound of her own voice and the unaccustomed taste of candor. It muddled her like wine, or like a first breath of freedom.

The city atmosphere certainly has improved her. Some way she doesn't seem like the same woman.