Explore the most impactful and insightful quotes and sayings by Kate Chopin, and enrich your perspective with the wisdom. Share these inspiring Kate Chopin quotes pictures with your friends on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, or your personal blogs, completely free. Here are the top 156 Kate Chopin quotes for you to read and share.
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
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
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
The delicious breath of rain was in the air. -- Kate Chopin
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
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
Mrs. Pontellier gave over being astonished, and concluded that wonders would never cease. -- Kate Chopin
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
A certain light was beginning to dawn dimly within her, - the light which, showing the way, forbids it. -- Kate Chopin
She was always talking about her "condition." Her "condition" was in no way apparent, and no one would have known a thing about it but for her persistence in making it the subject of conversation. -- 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 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
When he possessed her, they seemed to swoon together at the very borderland of life's mystery. -- Kate Chopin
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
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
She was just having a good cry all to herself. -- Kate Chopin
There are some people who leave impressions not so lasting as the imprint of an oar upon the water. -- Kate Chopin
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
He was always intending to go to Mexico, but some way never got there. Meanwhile he held on to his modest position in a mercantile house in New Orleans, where an equal familiarity with English, French and Spanish gave him no small value as a clerk and correspondent. -- Kate Chopin
No, I only think you cruel, as I said the other day. Maybe not intentionally cruel; but you seem to be forcing me into disclosures which can result in nothing; as if you would have me bare a wound for the pleasure of looking at it, without the intention or power of healing it. -- Kate Chopin
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
Even as a child she had lived her own small life within herself. At a very early period she had apprehended instinctively the dual life - that outward existence which conforms, the inward life which questions. -- Kate Chopin
She says a wedding is one of the most lamentable spectacles on earth. -- Kate Chopin
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
Goodbye -- Because I love you. -- Kate Chopin
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
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
And the ladies, selecting with dainty and discriminating fingers and a little greedily, all declared that Mr. Pontellier was the best husband in the world. Mrs. Pontellier was forced to admit that she knew of none better. -- Kate Chopin
The soul of her youth clamored for its rights; for a share in the world's glory and exultation. -- Kate Chopin
His coming was in the nature of a welcome disturbance; it seemed to furnish a new direction for her emotions. -- Kate Chopin
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. -- Kate Chopin
She was growing accustomed to like shocks, but she could not keep the mounting color back from her cheeks. -- Kate Chopin
She grew daring and reckless, overestimating her strength. She wanted to swim far out, where no woman had swum before. -- Kate Chopin
She turned her face seaward to gather in an impression of space and solitude, which the vast expanse of water, meeting and melting with the moonlit sky, conveyed to her excited fancy. As she swam she seemed to be reaching out for the unlimited in which to lose herself. -- Kate Chopin
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. -- Kate Chopin
She could hear again the ripple of water, the flapping sail. She could see the glint of the moon upon the bay, and could feel the soft, gusty beating of the hot south wind. A subtle current of desire passed through her body, weakening her hold upon the brushes and making her eyes burn. -- Kate Chopin
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
She missed him the days when some pretext served to take him away from her, just as one misses the sun on a cloudy day without having thought much about the sun when it was shining. -- Kate Chopin
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
Good night. I adore you. Sleep well. -- Kate Chopin
And you have eyes the colour of beech leaves in October. Yet no one is ever allowed to look into them. -- 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
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
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
I love you. Good-by--because I love you. -- Kate Chopin
How long will you be gone?"
"Forever, perhaps. I don't know. It depends upon a good many things. -- Kate Chopin
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
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
His manner invited easy confidence. The preliminary stage of becoming acquainted was one which he always endeavored to ignore when a pretty and engaging woman was concerned. -- Kate Chopin
I hope you won't completely forget me. -- Kate Chopin
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
She put her arms around me and felt my shoulder blades to see if my wings were strong. -- Kate Chopin
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Don't stir all the warmth out of your coffee; drink it. -- Kate Chopin
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
The artist must possess the courageous soul that dares and defies -- Kate Chopin
I have said it before, but I don't think I have ever came so near meaning it. -- Kate Chopin
I've been working like a machine, and feeling like a lost soul. -- Kate Chopin
Every step which she took toward relieving herself from obligations added to her strength and expansion as an individual. -- Kate Chopin
I am no longer one of Mr. Pontellier's possessions to dispose of or not. -- Kate Chopin
She reminded him of some beautiful, sleek animal waking up in the sun. -- Kate Chopin
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
Discover her appetite, and to see the relish with which she ate the -- Kate Chopin
Daisies, just starting to close their petals, littered the grass like fallen stars. -- Kate Chopin
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
By all the codes which I am acquainted with, I am a devilishly wicked specimen of the sex. -- Kate Chopin
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
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
The peace and beauty of a spring day had descended upon the earth like a benediction. -- Kate Chopin
Sometimes I feel this summer as if I were walking through the green meadow again, idly, aimlessly, unthinking and unguided. -- Kate Chopin
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
So does he live, seeking, finding, joying and suffering. -- Kate Chopin
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
Have you ever heard the earth breath? -- Kate Chopin
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
If one of the little Pontellier boys took a tumble whilst at play, he was not apt to rush crying to his mother's arms for comfort; he would more likely pick himself up, wipe the water out of his eyes and the sand out of his mouth, and go on playing. -- Kate Chopin
Pirate gold isn't a thing to be hoarded or utilized. It is something to squander and throw to the four winds, for the fun of seeing the golden specks fly. -- Kate Chopin
A bird with a broken wing was beating the air above, reeling, fluttering, circling disabled, down, down to the water -- Kate Chopin
It is bizarre to treat all differences as oppositions, -- 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
Youth is given up to illusions. -- Kate Chopin
She wanted to destroy something. The crash and clatter were what she wanted to hear. -- Kate Chopin
A vision of the future like some dim, gaunt monster sometimes appalled her, but luckily to-morrow never comes. Mrs. -- Kate Chopin
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. -- Kate Chopin
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
The flowers were like new acquaintances; she approached them in a familiar spirit, and made herself at home among them. -- Kate Chopin
It was not despair, but it seemed to her as if life were passing by, leaving its promises broken and unfulfilled. Yet there were other days when she listened, was led on and deceived by fresh promises which her youth had held out to her. -- Kate Chopin
The delicous breath of rain was in the air. -- Kate Chopin
Most women are moody and whimsical. -- Kate Chopin
I love you, only you; no one but you. It was you who awoke me last summer out of a life-long, stupid dream. -- Kate Chopin
Her husband seemed to her now like a person whom she had married without love as an excuse. -- Kate Chopin
She had tried to forget him, realizing the inutility of remembering. -- Kate Chopin
Time doesn't concern me. -- Kate Chopin
I leave such ventures ti you younger men with the fever of life still in your blood. -- Kate Chopin
The morning was full of sunlight and hope. -- Kate Chopin
She had resolved to never take another step backward. -- Kate Chopin
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
When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease - of joy that kills. -- Kate Chopin
The rain beat softly upon the shingles, inviting them to drowsiness and sleep. But they dared not yield. The rain was over; and the sun was turning the glistening world into a palace of gems. -- Kate Chopin
One who awakens gradually out of a dream, a delicious, grotesque, impossible dream, to feel again the realities pressing into her soul -- Kate Chopin
It was still quite light out of doors, but inside with the curtains drawn and the smouldering fire sending out a dim, uncertain glow, the room was full of deep shadows. -- Kate Chopin
She seemed to have apprehended all of the composer's coldness and none of his poetry. -- Kate Chopin
It is greater than the stars - that moving procession of human energy; greater than the palpitating earth and the things growing thereon. -- Kate Chopin
She was moved by a kind of commiseration ... 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. -- Kate Chopin
The voice of the sea is seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander in abysses of solitude. -- 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 would, through habit, have yielded to his desire; not with any sense of submission or obedience to his compelling wishes, but unthinkingly, as we walk, move, sit, stand, go through the daily treadmill of the life which has been portioned out to us. -- Kate Chopin
Don't part from me in any ill humor. I never knew you to be out of patience with me before. -- Kate Chopin
The way to become rich is to make money, my dear Edna, not to save it, he said. -- Kate Chopin
She's got some sort of notion in her head concerning the eternal rights of women. -- Kate Chopin
She answered her husband with friendly evasiveness - not with any fixed design to mislead him, only because all sense of reality had gone out of her life; she had abandoned herself to Fate, and awaited the consequences with indifference. -- Kate Chopin
But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely. -- Kate Chopin
She grew fond of her husband, realizing with some unaccountable satisfaction that no trace of passion or excessive and fictitious warmth colored her affection, thereby threatening its dissolution. -- Kate Chopin
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
We shall be everything to each other. Nothing else shall be of any consequence. -- Kate Chopin
She had all her life long been accustomed to harbor thoughts and emotions which never voiced themselves. -- Kate Chopin
I should never deem a man of ordinary caliber worthy of my devotion. -- 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
Feeling secure regarding their happiness and welfare, she did not miss them except with an occasional, intense longing. -- Kate Chopin
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
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
You are the embodiment of selfishness. -- Kate Chopin
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
She was rather handsome than beautiful. Her face was captivating by reason of a certain frankness of expression and a contradictory subtle play of features. -- Kate Chopin
He could see plainly that she was not herself. That is, he could not see that she was becoming herself [ ... ]. -- Kate Chopin
An indescribable oppression, which seemed to generate in some unfamiliar part of her consciousness, filled her whole being with a vague anguish. -- Kate Chopin
The eyes alone in the baby suggested the man. And -- Kate Chopin
If ever a fusion of two human beings into one has been accomplished on this sphere it was surely their union. -- Kate Chopin
[ ... ] the beginning of things, of a world especially is necessarily vague, tangled, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing. -- Kate Chopin
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
So the storm passed and every one was happy. -- Kate Chopin
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. -- Kate Chopin
It must always have been God's day on that low, drowsy island, Edna thought. They -- Kate Chopin
But whatever came, she had resolved never again to belong to another than herself. -- Kate Chopin
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. -- Kate Chopin
I would give up the unessential; I would give up my money, I would give up my life for my children; but I wouldn't give myself. I can't make it more clear; it's only something I am beginning to comprehend, which is revealing itself to me. -- Kate Chopin
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
Mrs. Pontellier liked to sit and gaze at her fair companion as she might look upon a faultless Madonna. -- Kate Chopin
She felt that her speech was voicing the incoherency her thoughts, and stopped abruptly. -- Kate Chopin
He thought it very discouraging that his wife, who was the sole object of his existence, evinced so little interest in things which concerned him, and valued so little his conversation. -- Kate Chopin
The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. -- Kate Chopin
A person can't have everything in this world; and it was a little unreasonable of her to expect it. -- Kate Chopin
Great matter to have one's hand kissed. She was provoked at his having written the apology. She answered in as light and bantering a spirit as she fancied it deserved, and -- Kate Chopin
There was no despondency when she fell asleep that night; nor was there hope when she awoke in the morning. -- Kate Chopin
And moreover, to succeed, the artist must possess the courageous soul ... the brave soul. The soul that dares and defies. -- Kate Chopin
The heart jealous of the soul! -- Kate Chopin
She wanted something to happen - something, anything: she did not know what. -- Kate Chopin
The city atmosphere certainly has improved her. Some way she doesn't seem like the same woman. -- Kate Chopin
A general air of surprise and genuine satisfaction fell upon everyone as they saw the pianist enter. -- Kate Chopin
Don't go; don't go! Oh! Edna, stay with me. -- Kate Chopin
