Quotes from Kate Chopin

Perhaps it is better to wake up after all, even to suffer, rather than to remain a dupe to illusions all one's life.

And moreover, to succeed, the artist must possess the courageous soul . . . the brave soul. The soul that dares and defies.

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

One of these days, she said, I'm going to pull myself together for a while and think - try to determine what character of a woman I am, for, candidly, I do not know. By all the codes which I am acquainted with, I am a devilishly wicked specimen of the sex. But some way I can't convince myself that I am. I must think about it.

There are periods of despondency and suffering which take possession of me. But I don't want anything but my own way. That is wanting a good deal, of course, when you have to trample upon the lives, the hearts, the prejudices of others-

She felt as if a mist had been lifted from her eyes, enabling her to look upon and comprehend the significance of life, that monster made up of beauty and brutality.

But the beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, tangled, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing. How few of us ever emerge from such beginning! How many souls perish in its tumult!

I hope you won't completely forget me.

She had tried to forget him, realizing the inutility of remembering. But the thought of him was like an obsession, ever pressing itself upon her. It was not that she dwelt upon details of their acquaintance, or recalled in any special or peculiar way his personality; it was his being, his existence, which dominated her thought, fading sometimes as if it would melt into the mist of the forgotten, reviving again with an intensity which filled her with an incomprehensible longing.

She had all her life long been accustomed to harbor thoughts and emotions which never voiced themselves… They belonged to her her and were her own, and she entertained the conviction that she had a right to them and they they concerned no one but herself.

Exhaustion was pressing upon and overpowering her. Good-by--because I love you. He did not know; he did not understand. He would never understand. Perhaps Doctor Mandelet would have understood if she had seen him--but it was too late; the shore was far behind her, and her strength was gone. She looked into the distance, and the old terror flamed up for an instant, then sank again.

I would give up the unessential; I would give my money, I would give my life for my children; but I wouldn't give myself.

She looked into the distance, and the old terror flamed up for an instant, then sank again. Edna heard her father's voice and her sister Margaret's. She heard the barking of an old dog that was chained to the sycamore tree. The spurs of the cavalry officer clanged as he walked across the porch. There was the hum of bees, and the musky odor of pinks filled the air. (last lines)

The stillest hour of the night had come, the hour before dawn, when the world seems to hold its breath. The moon hung low, and had turned from silver to copper in the sleeping sky.

The trouble is, sighed the Doctor, grasping her meaning intuitively, that youth is given up to illusions. It seems to be a provision of Nature; a decoy to secure mothers for the race. And Nature takes no account of moral consequences, of arbitrary conditions which we create, and which we feel obliged to maintain at any cost.

She had resolved to never take another step backward.

She liked then to wander alone into strange and unfamiliar places. She discovered many a sunny, sleepy corner, fashioned to dream in.

And, moreover, to succeed, the artist much possess the courageous soul.

Well, for instance, when I left her today, she put her arms around me and felt my shoulder blades, to see if my wings were strong, she said.

Or else she stayed in and nursed a mood with which she was becoming too familiar for her own comfort and peace of mind. It was not despair; but it seemed to her as if life were passing by, leaving its promise broken and unfulfilled.

I love you, only you; no one but you. It was you who awoke me last summer out of a life-long, stupid dream.

a tangle of sea smell and of weeds and damp, new-plowed earth, mingled with the heavy perfumes of white blossoms somewhere near, but the night sat lightly upon the sea and the land. there was no weight of darkness, there were no shadows. the white light of the moon had fallen upon the world like the mystery and the softness of sleep.

She wanted to destroy something. The crash and clatter were what she wanted to hear.

It sometimes entered Mr. Pontellier's mind to wonder if his wife were not growing a little unbalanced mentally. He could see plainly that she was not herself. That is, he could not see that she was becoming herself and daily casting aside that fictitious self which we assume like a garment with which to appear before the world.