Quotes from Kate Chopin

She was just having a good cry all to herself.

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.

I couldn't help loving you if you were ten times his wife; but so long as I went away from you and kept away I could help telling you so.

Edna lived a dual life - that outward existence which conforms, the inward life which questions

If ever a fusion of two human beings into one has been accomplished on this sphere it was surely their union.

Do you suppose a woman knows why she loves? Does she select?

I have said it before, but I don't think I have ever came so near meaning it.

There would be no one to live for her during those coming years; she would live for herself.

when he possessed her, they seemed to swoon together at the very borderland of life's mystery.

It is bizarre to treat all differences as oppositions

I wonder if anyone else has an ear so tuned and sharpened as I have, to detect the music, not of the spheres, but of earth, subtleties of major and minor chord that the wind strikes upon the tree branches. Have you ever heard the earth breathe?

She waited for the material pictures which she thought would gather and blaze before her imagination. She waited in vain. She saw no pictures of solitude, of hope, of longing, or of despair. But the very passions themselves were aroused within her soul, swaying it, lashing it, as the waves daily beat upon her splendid body. She trembled, she was choking, and the tears blinded her.

The bird that would soar above the plane of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings.

She was seeking herself and finding herself in just such sweet, half-darkness which met her moods. But the voices were not soothing that came to her from the darkness and the sky above and the stars. They jeered and sounded mournful notes without promise, devoid even of hope.

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 heart jealous of the soul!

Every step which she took toward relieving herself from obligations added to her strength and expansion as an individual.

She seemed to have apprehended all of the composer's coldness and none of his poetry.

Conditions would some way adjust themselves, she felt; but whatever came, she had resolved never again to belong to another than herself.

There were days when she was unhappy, she did not know why,—when it did not seem worth while to be glad or sorry, to be alive or dead; when life appeared to her like a grotesque pandemonium and humanity like worms struggling blindly toward inevitable annihilation. She could not work on such a day, nor weave fancies to stir her pulses and warm her blood.

Step by step she lived over every instant of the time she had been with Robert... She recalled his words, his looks. How few and meager they had been for her hungry heart! ... She wondered when he would come back. He had not said he would come back. She had been with him had heard his voice and touched his hand. But some way he had seemed nearer to her off there in Mexico.

She was happy to be alive and breathing, when her whole being seemed to be one with the sunlight, the color, the odors, the luxuriant warmth of some perfect Southern day.

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.

I would give my life for my children, but I wouldn't give myself. I can't make it more clear; it's only something which I am beginning to comprehend, which is revealing itself to me