Kate Chopin Quotes

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

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

~ Kate Chopin

The morning was full of sunlight and hope.

~ Kate Chopin

She was still under the spell of her infatuation. 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.

~ Kate Chopin

What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being! Free! Body and soul free! She kept whispering.

~ Kate Chopin

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

~ Kate Chopin

…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.

~ Kate Chopin

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.

~ Kate Chopin

So does he live, seeking, finding, joying and suffering.

~ Kate Chopin

Her husband seemed to her now like a person whom she had married without love as an excuse.

~ Kate Chopin

Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long.

~ Kate Chopin

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.

~ Kate Chopin

It seems to me if I were young and in love I should never deem a man of ordinary caliber worthy of my devotion.

~ Kate Chopin

The artist must possess the courageous soul that dares and defies

~ Kate Chopin

Edna felt depressed rather than soothed after leaving them. The little glimpse of domestic harmony which had been offered her, gave her no regret, no longing. It was not a condition of life which fitted her, and she could see in it but an apalling and hopeless ennui. She was moved by a kind of commiseration for Madame Ratignolle, - a pity for that colorless existence which never uplifted its possessor beyond the region of blind contentment, in which no moment of anguish ever visited her soul, in which she would never have the taste of life's delirium. Edna vaguely wondered what she meant by life's delirium. It had crossed her thought like some unsought, extraneous impression.

~ Kate Chopin

Mrs.Pontellier was not a woman given to confidences, a chararacteristic hitherto contrary to her nature. Even as a child she had lived her own small life all within herself. At a very early period she had aprehended instinctively the dual life, that outward existence which conforms, the inward life which questions.

~ Kate Chopin

She had resolved to never take another step backward.

~ Kate Chopin

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

...when I left her to-day, she put her arms around me and felt my shoulder blades, to see if my wings were strong, she said. '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

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

~ Kate Chopin

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

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.

~ Kate Chopin

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

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. They are fortunate beings. They do not need to apprehend the significance of things. They do not grow weary nor miss step, nor do they fall out of rank and sink by the wayside to be left contemplating the moving procession.Ah! that moving procession that has left me by the road-side! Its fantastic colors are more brilliant and beautiful than the sun on the undulating waters. What matter if souls and bodies are failing beneath the feet of the ever-pressing multitude! It moves with the majestic rhythm of the spheres. Its discordant clashes sweep upward in one harmonious tone that blends with the music of other worlds--to complete God's orchestra.It is greater than the stars--that moving procession of human energy; greater than the palpitating earth and the things growing thereon. Oh! I could weep at being left by the wayside; left with the grass and the clouds and a few dumb animals. True, I feel at home in the society of these symbols of life's immutability. In the procession I should feel the crushing feet, the clashing discords, the ruthless hands and stifling breath. I could not hear the rhythm of the march.Salve! ye dumb hearts. Let us be still and wait by the roadside.

~ Kate Chopin

The mother-women seemed to prevail that summer at Grand Isle. It was easy to know them, fluttering about with extended, protecting wings when any harm, real or imaginary, threatened their precious brood. They were women who idolized their children, worshiped their husbands, and esteemed it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals and grow wings as ministering angels.

~ Kate Chopin

I leave such ventures ti you younger men with the fever of life still in your blood.

~ Kate Chopin

To be an artist includes much, one must possess many gifts--absolute gifts--which have not been acquired by one's own effort.

~ Kate Chopin

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

The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation. The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace.

~ Kate Chopin

A certain light was beginning to dawn dimly within her,—the light which, showing the way, forbids it.

~ Kate Chopin

An indescribable oppression, which seemed to generate in some unfamiliar part of her consciousness, filled her whole being with a vague anguish. It was like a shadow, like a mist passing across her soul's summer day. It was strange and unfamiliar; it was a mood. She did not sit there inwardly upbraiding her husband, lamenting at Fate, which had directed her footsteps to the path which they had taken. She was just having a good cry all to herself.

~ Kate Chopin

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

~ Kate Chopin

She perceived that her will had blazed up, stubborn and resistant. She could not at that moment have done other than denied and resisted. She wondered if her husband had ever spoken to her like that before. and if she had submitted to his command. Of course she had; she remembered that she had. But she could not realise why or how she should have yielded, feeling as she then did.

~ Kate Chopin

But the beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, tangled, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing.

~ Kate Chopin

Don't stir all the warmth out of your coffee, drink it.

~ Kate Chopin

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

She felt that her speech was voicing the incoherency her thoughts, and stopped abruptly.

~ Kate Chopin

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

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

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