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.Collection: Art
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.Collection: Nature
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.Collection: Trust
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.Collection: Smile
There are some people who leave impressions not so lasting as the imprint of an oar upon the water.
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.
A person can't have everything in this world; and it was a little unreasonable of her to expect it.
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?
So the storm passed and every one was happy.
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.
When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease - of joy that kills.
It is greater than the stars - that moving procession of human energy; greater than the palpitating earth and the things growing thereon.
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!
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.
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.
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.
Perhaps it is better to wake up after all, even to suffer, rather than to remain a dupe to illusions all one's life.Collection: Suffering
A wedding is one of the most lamentable spectacles on earth.Collection: Earth
The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace.Collection: Beach
The artist must possess the courageous soul that dares and defiesCollection: Artist
I should never deem a man of ordinary caliber worthy of my devotion.Collection: Men
I would give up my life for my children, but not myself.Collection: Children
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.Collection: Children
The way to become rich is to make money, not to save it.Collection: Way
but whatever came, she had resolved never again to belong to another than herself.Collection: Inspirational Life
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.Collection: Self
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.Collection: Strong
Have you ever heard the earth breath?Collection: Clever
The voice of the sea speaks to the soul.Collection: Beach
Goodbye -- Because I love you.Collection: Goodbye
She wanted something to happen - something, anything: she did not know what.Collection: Wanted
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.Collection: Children
We shall be everything to each other. Nothing else in the world is of any consequence.Collection: Consequence
And Nature takes no account of moral consequences, of arbitrary conditions which we create, and which we feel obliged to maintain at any cost.Collection: Arbitrary
The voice of the sea is seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander in abysses of solitude.Collection: Sea
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.Collection: Strong
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.Collection: Depression
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.Collection: Sky
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.Collection: Past
I'm tired," she uttered complainingly. "I know you are." "You don't know anything about it. Why should you know? I never was so exhausted in my life. But it isn't unpleasant. A thousand emotions have swept through me to-night. I don't comprehend half on them. Don't mind what I'm saying; I am just thinking aloud.Collection: Tired
one who awakens gradually out of a dream, a delicious, grotesque, impossible dream, to feel again the realities pressing into her soulCollection: Dream
In short, Mrs. Pontellier was beginning to realize her position in the universe as a human being, and to recongize 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.Collection: Eight
Madame Ratignolle hoped that Robert would exercise extreme caution in dealing with the Mexicans, who, she considered, were a treacherous people, unscrupulous and revengeful. She trusted she did them no injustice in thus condemning them as a race. She had known personally but one Mexican, who made and sold excellent tamales, and whom she would have trusted implicitly, so soft-spoken was he. One day he was arrested for stabbing his wife. She never knew whether he had been hanged or not.Collection: Exercise
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.Collection: Healing
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-Collection: Heart
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.Collection: Sex
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.Collection: Regret
I dance with people I despise; amuse myself with men whose only talent lies in their feet, gain the disapprobation of people I honor and respect; return home at day break with my brain in a state which was never intended for it; and arise in the middle of the next day feeling infinitely more, in spirit and flesh like a Liliputian, than a woman with body and soul. Entry (when she was eighteen) in her Commonplace Book, 1868-1869.Collection: Lying
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.Collection: Distance
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.Collection: Long