Kate Chopin Quotes

“There were days when she was very happy without knowing why. 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. She liked then to wander alone into strange and unfamiliar places. She discovered many a sunny, sleepy corner, fashioned to dream in. And she found it good to dream and to be alone and unmolested.

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.”
― Kate Chopin, The Awakening

“The morning was full of sunlight and hope.”
― Kate Chopin, The Awakening

“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, The Awakening

“She went and stood at an open window and looked out upon the deep tangle of the garden below. All the mystery and witchery of the night seemed to have gathered there amid the perfumes and the dusky and torturous outlines of flowers and foliage. 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.”
― Kate Chopin, The Awakening

“She liked then to wander alone into strange and unfamiliar places. She discovered many a sunny, sleepy corner, fashioned to dream in.”
― Kate Chopin, The Awakening

“She had resolved to never take another step backward.”
― Kate Chopin, The Awakening

“She wanted to destroy something. The crash and clatter were what she wanted to hear.”
― Kate Chopin, The Awakening

“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, was hers, to torture her as it was doing then with the biting which her impassioned, newly awakened being demanded.”
― Kate Chopin, The Awakening

“Sometimes I feel this summer as if I were walking through the green meadow again, idly, aimlessly, unthinking and unguided.”
― Kate Chopin, The Awakening

“She grew daring and reckless, overestimating her strength. She wanted to swim far out, where no woman had swum before.”
― Kate Chopin, The Awakening

“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”
― Kate Chopin, The Awakening

“In short, Mrs. Pontellier was beginning to realize her position in the universe as a human being, and to recognize her relations as an individual to the world within and about her. This may seem like a ponderous weight of wisdom to descend upon the soul of a young woman of twenty-eight—perhaps more wisdom than the Holy Ghost is usually pleased to vouchsafe to any woman.
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!”
― Kate Chopin, The Awakening & Other Short Stories

“You are burnt beyond recognition," he added, looking at his wife as one looks at a valuable piece of personal property which has suffered some damage. She held up her hands, strong, shapely hands, and surveyed them critically, drawing up her fawn sleeves above the wrists. Looking at them reminded her of her rings, which she had given to her husband before leaving for the beach. She silently reached out to him, and he, understanding, took the rings from his vest pocket and dropped them into her open palm. She slipped them upon her fingers; then clasping her knees, she looked across at Robert and began to laugh. The rings sparkled upon her fingers. He sent back an answering smile.”
― Kate Chopin, The Awakening

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

“But the beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, tangled, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing.”
― Kate Chopin, The Awakening

“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, The Awakening

“I leave such ventures ti you younger men with the fever of life still in your blood.”
― Kate Chopin, The Awakening

“Don't stir all the warmth out of your coffee; drink it.”
― Kate Chopin, The Awakening

“Hope follows on the heels of Faith. And the white-winged goddess—which is Hope—did not leave her, but prompted her to many little surreptitious acts of preparation in the event of the miracle coming to pass.”
― Kate Chopin, The Awakening and Selected Short Fiction

“She met the pleasurable things of life with frank, open appreciation, and against distasteful conditions she rebelled. Dissimulation was as foreign to her nature as guile to the breast of a babe, and her rebellious outbreaks, by no means rare, had hitherto been quite open and aboveboard.”
― Kate Chopin, Athénaïse

“Beside being a respectable woman she was a very sensible one; and she knew there are some battles in life which a human being must fight alone.”
― Kate Chopin, A Respectable Woman

“Romances serve but to feed the imagination of the young; they add nothing to the sum of truth.”
― Kate Chopin, The Awakening and Selected Short Fiction

“Since I was a girl I always felt as if I would like to write stories. I never had that ambition or shine to make a name; first place because I knew what time and labor it meant to acquire a literary style. Second place, because whenever I wanted to write a story I never could think of a plot.”
― Kate Chopin, The Awakening and Selected Short Fiction

“He looks into the faces of people who pass us by. He tells me that in their eyes he reads the story of their souls.”
― Kate Chopin