Top 100 Quotes About Kate Chopin
#1. The Awakening, by Kate Chopin, and The Optimist's Daughter, by Eudora Welty.
Cheryl Strayed
#2. I always try to avoid looking at the section where my books would be shelved, but I do know that my most reliable neighbor to the right is Kate Chopin's 'The Awakening', which is dispiriting. That's a book I don't want to re-read.
Susan Choi
#3. And you have eyes the colour of beech leaves in October. Yet no one is ever allowed to look into them.
Kate Chopin
#4. He reproached his wife with her inattention, her habitual neglect of the children. If it was not a mother's place to look after children, whose on earth was it? He himself had his hands full with his brokerage business.
Kate Chopin
#5. Mrs. Pontellier gave over being astonished, and concluded that wonders would never cease.
Kate Chopin
#6. What shall we do there?" "Climb up the hill to the old fort and look at the little wriggling gold snakes, and watch the lizards sun themselves.
Kate Chopin
#7. She felt like a chess player who, by the clever handling of his pieces, sees the game taking the course intended. Her eyes were bright and tender with a smile as they glanced up into his; and her lips looked hungry for the kiss which they invited.
Kate Chopin
#8. 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.
Kate Chopin
#9. She felt moved to read the book in secret and solitude, though none of the others had done so, - to hide it from view at the sound of approaching footsteps.
Kate Chopin
#10. The bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings. It is a sad spectacle to see the weaklings bruised, exhausted, fluttering back to earth.
Kate Chopin
#11. Sometimes I feel this summer as if I were walking through the green meadow again, idly, aimlessly, unthinking and unguided.
Kate Chopin
#12. 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-
Kate Chopin
#13. Her marriage to Leonce Pontellier was purely an accident, in this respect resembling many other marriages which masquerade as the decrees of Fate.
Kate Chopin
#14. The peace and beauty of a spring day had descended upon the earth like a benediction.
Kate Chopin
#15. The lovers were just entering the grounds of the pension. They were leaning toward each other as the water oaks bent from the sea. There was not a particle of earth beneath their feet. Their heads might have been turned upside down, so absolutely did they tread upon blue ether.
Kate Chopin
#16. He greatly valued his possessions, chiefly because they were his, and derived genuine pleasure from contemplating a painting, a statuette, a rare lace curtain - no matter what - after he had bought it and placed it among his household gods.
Kate Chopin
#17. The children appeared before her like antagonists who had overcome her; who had overpowered and sought to drag her into the soul's slavery for the rest of her days.
Kate Chopin
#18. The past was nothing to her; offered no lesson which she was willing to heed. The future was a mystery which she never attempted to penetrate. The present alone was significant.
Kate Chopin
#19. There was something in her attitude, in her whole appearance when she leaned her head against the high-backed chair and spread her arms, which suggested the regal woman, the one who rules, who looks on, who stands alone.
Kate Chopin
#20. By all the codes which I am acquainted with, I am a devilishly wicked specimen of the sex.
Kate Chopin
#21. Edna had once told Madame Ratignolle that she would never sacrifice herself for her children; or for anyone.
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.
Kate Chopin
#22. There are some people who leave impressions not so lasting as the imprint of an oar upon the water.
Kate Chopin
#25. 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.
Kate Chopin
#26. I hope you won't completely forget me.
Kate Chopin
#27. I trust it will not be giving away professional secrets to say that many readers would be surprised, perhaps shocked, at the questions which some newspaper editors will put to a defenseless woman under the guise of flattery.
Kate Chopin
#28. So does he live, seeking, finding, joying and suffering.
Kate Chopin
#29. She liked then to wander alone into strange and unfamiliar places. She discovered many a sunny, sleepy corner, fashioned to dream in.
Kate Chopin
#30. The Ratignolles understood each other perfectly. If ever the fusion of two human beings into one has been accomplished on this sphere it was surely in their union.
Kate Chopin
#31. Par exemple! I never had to ask. You were always there under my feet, like a troublesome cat." "You mean like an adoring dog. And just as soon as Ratignolle appeared on the scene, then it WAS like a dog. 'Passez! Adieu! Allez vous-en!
Kate Chopin
#32. There would be no one to live for her during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature.
Kate Chopin
#33. The artist must possess the courageous soul that dares and defies
Kate Chopin
#34. Who can tell what metals the gods use in forging the subtle bond which we call sympathy, which we might as well call love.
Kate Chopin
#35. Don't stir all the warmth out of your coffee; drink it.
Kate Chopin
#36. It was going to be a beautiful morning, I remember thinking, as I left the house; soft and close, bursting with whispered promises, as only a daybreak in early summer can be.
Kate Chopin
#37. Has she," asked the Doctor, with a smile, "has she been associating of late with a circle of pseudo-intellectual women - super-spiritual superior beings? My wife has been telling me about them.
Kate Chopin
#38. It would have been a difficult matter for Mr. Pontellier to define to his own satisfaction or any one else's wherein his wife failed in her duty toward their children. It was something which he felt rather than perceived, and he never voiced the feeling without subsequent regret and ample atonement.
Kate Chopin
#39. When Doctor Mandelet dined with the Pontelliers on Thursday he could discern in Mrs. Pontellier no trace of that morbid condition which her husband had reported to him. She was excited and in a manner radiant.
Kate Chopin
#40. To be an artist includes much; one must possess many gifts - absolute gifts - which have not been acquired by one's own effort. And, moreover, to succeed, the artist much possess the courageous soul.
Kate Chopin
#41. There was a dull pang of regret because it was not the kiss of love which had inflamed her, because it was not love which had held this cup of life to her lips.
Kate Chopin
#42. The Doctor ... told the old ever-new and curious story of the waning of a woman's love, seeking strange, new channels, only to return to its legitimate source after days of fierce unrest.
Kate Chopin
#43. Perhaps it is better to wake up after all, even to suffer, rather than to remain a dupe to illusions all one's life.
Kate Chopin
#44. Edna looked straight before her with a self-absorbed expression upon her face. She felt no interest in anything about her. The street, the children, the fruit vender, the flowers growing there under her eyes, were all part and parcel of an alien world which had suddenly become antagonistic.
Kate Chopin
#45. Daisies, just starting to close their petals, littered the grass like fallen stars.
Kate Chopin
#46. Discover her appetite, and to see the relish with which she ate the
Kate Chopin
#47. 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.
Kate Chopin
#49. She reminded him of some beautiful, sleek animal waking up in the sun.
Kate Chopin
#50. I am no longer one of Mr. Pontellier's possessions to dispose of or not.
Kate Chopin
#51. Every step which she took toward relieving herself from obligations added to her strength and expansion as an individual.
Kate Chopin
#52. 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.
Kate Chopin
#53. She was just having a good cry all to herself.
Kate Chopin
#54. I don't want to part in any ill-humor. But can't you understand? I've grown used to seeing you, to having you with me all the time, and your action seems unfriendly, even unkind. You don't even offer an excuse for it. Why, I was planning to be together.
Kate Chopin
#55. I've been working like a machine, and feeling like a lost soul.
Kate Chopin
#56. I have said it before, but I don't think I have ever came so near meaning it.
Kate Chopin
#57. She says queer things sometimes in a bantering way that you don't notice at the time and you find yourself thinking about afterward.
Kate Chopin
#58. She was fond of her children in an uneven, impulsive way. She would sometimes gather them passionately to her heart; she would sometimes forget them.
Kate Chopin
#59. She says a wedding is one of the most lamentable spectacles on earth.
Kate Chopin
#60. 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.
Kate Chopin
#61. She had resolved to never take another step backward.
Kate Chopin
#62. But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely.
Kate Chopin
#63. How long will you be gone?"
"Forever, perhaps. I don't know. It depends upon a good many things.
Kate Chopin
#64. There was no despondency when she fell asleep that night; nor was there hope when she awoke in the morning.
Kate Chopin
#65. Mrs. Pontellier liked to sit and gaze at her fair companion as she might look upon a faultless Madonna.
Kate Chopin
#66. [ ... ] the beginning of things, of a world especially is necessarily vague, tangled, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing.
Kate Chopin
#67. The children were sent to bed. Some went submissively; others with shrieks and protests as they were dragged away. They had been permitted to sit up till after the ice-cream, which naturally marked the limit of human indulgence.
Kate Chopin
#68. She had tried to forget him, realizing the inutility of remembering.
Kate Chopin
#69. His coming was in the nature of a welcome disturbance; it seemed to furnish a new direction for her emotions.
Kate Chopin
#70. But she laughed and looked at him with eyes that at once gave him courage to wait and made it torture to wait.
Kate Chopin
#71. She wanted to destroy something. The crash and clatter were what she wanted to hear.
Kate Chopin
#72. One must possess many gifts ... which have not been acquired by one's own effort. And, moreover ... the artist must possess the courageous soul.
Kate Chopin
#73. The city atmosphere certainly has improved her. Some way she doesn't seem like the same woman.
Kate Chopin
#74. She was growing accustomed to like shocks, but she could not keep the mounting color back from her cheeks.
Kate Chopin
#75. There was no one thing in the world that she desired. There was no human being whom she wanted near her except Robert; and she even realized that the day would come when he, too, and the thought of him would melt out of her existence, leaving her alone.
Kate Chopin
#76. The delicous breath of rain was in the air.
Kate Chopin
#77. But whatever came, she had resolved never again to belong to another than herself.
Kate Chopin
#78. It is greater than the stars - that moving procession of human energy; greater than the palpitating earth and the things growing thereon.
Kate Chopin
#79. 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.
Kate Chopin
#80. We need more bodies, 'cause it's not looking enough like the last scene in Hamlet already.
Chopper Jim Chopin
Dana Stabenow
#81. Her husband seemed to her now like a person whom she had married without love as an excuse.
Kate Chopin
#82. A person can't have everything in this world; and it was a little unreasonable of her to expect it.
Kate Chopin
#83. The eyes alone in the baby suggested the man. And
Kate Chopin
#84. I should never deem a man of ordinary caliber worthy of my devotion.
Kate Chopin
#85. A bird with a broken wing was beating the air above, reeling, fluttering, circling disabled, down, down to the water
Kate Chopin
#86. You are the embodiment of selfishness.
Kate Chopin
#87. He was quite portly, with a profusion of gray hair, and small blue eyes which age had robbed of much of their brightness but none of their penetration.
Kate Chopin
#88. And moreover, to succeed, the artist must possess the courageous soul ... the brave soul. The soul that dares and defies.
Kate Chopin
#89. 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?
Kate Chopin
#90. I love you. Good-by--because I love you.
Kate Chopin
#91. She's got some sort of notion in her head concerning the eternal rights of women.
Kate Chopin
#92. It was the first kiss of her life to which her nature had really responded. It was a flaming torch that kindled desire.
Kate Chopin
#93. Don't go; don't go! Oh! Edna, stay with me.
Kate Chopin
#94. There were days when she was unhappy, she did not know why,
when it did not seem worthwhile 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.
Kate Chopin
#95. 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.
Kate Chopin
#96. 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.
Kate Chopin
#97. The voice of the sea is seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander in abysses of solitude.
Kate Chopin
#98. Robert's going had some way taken the brightness, the color, the meaning out of everything. The conditions of her life were in no way changed, but her whole existence was dulled, like a faded garment which seems to be no longer worth wearing.
Kate Chopin
#99. So the storm passed and every one was happy.
Kate Chopin
#100. She was becoming herself and daily casting aside that fictitious self which we assume like a garment with which to appear before the world.
Kate Chopin
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