Kate Chopin - The Awakening (1899)

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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
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
It is greater than the stars - that moving procession of human energy; greater than the palpitating earth and the things growing thereon.

Kate Chopin
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
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
To be an artist includes much; one must possess many gifts — absolute gifts — which have been acquired by one's own effort. And moreover, to succeed, the artist must possess the courageous soul... the brave soul. The soul that dares and defies.

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
There are some people who leave impressions not so lasting as the imprint of an oar upon the water.

Kate Chopin
Sometimes I feel this summer as if I were walking through the green meadow again; idly, aimlessly, unthinking, and unguided.

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

Kate Chopin
She looked into the distance, and the old terror flamed up for an instant, then sank again. Edna heard her father's voice and her sister Margaret's. She heard the barking of an old dog that was chained to the sycamore tree. The spurs of the cavalry officer clanged as he walked across the porch. There was the hum of bees, and the musky odor of pinks filled the air.

Kate Chopin
The beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, tangled, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing.

Kate Chopin
A bird with a broken wing was beating the air above, reeling, fluttering, circling disabled, down, down to the water

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 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'm going to pull myself together for a while and think-try to determine what character of a woman I am; for, candidly, I don't know. By all the codes which I am acquainted with, I am a devilishly wicked specimen of the sex. But some way I can't convince myself that I am. I must think about it.

Kate Chopin
I should never deem a man of ordinary caliber worthy of my devotion.

Kate Chopin
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.

Kate Chopin
She says a wedding is one of the most lamentable spectacles on earth.

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
One who awakens gradually out of a dream, a delicious, grotesque, impossible dream, to feel again the realities pressing into her soul

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 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
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
For the first time in her life she stood naked in the open air, at the mercy of the sun, the breeze that beat upon her, and the waves that invited her.

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
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
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 peace and beauty of a spring day had descended upon the earth like a benediction.

Kate Chopin
There was no despondency when she fell asleep that night; nor was there hope when she awoke in the morning.

Kate Chopin