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Kate Chopin Quotes

Kate Chopin was an American author of short stories and novels based in Louisiana. She is now considered by some scholars to have been a forerunner of American 20th-century feminist authors of Southern or Catholic background, such as Zelda Fitzgerald, and is one of the most frequently read and recognized writers of Louisiana Creole heritage.

Of maternal French and paternal Irish descent, Chopin was a woman born in St. Louis, Missouri. She married and moved with her husband to New Orleans. They later lived in the country in Cloutierville, Louisiana. From 1892 to 1895, Chopin wrote short stories for both children and adults that were published in such national magazines as Atlantic Monthly, Vogue, The Century Magazine, and The Youth's Companion. Her stories aroused controversy because of her subjects and her approach; they were condemned as immoral by some critics.

Her major works were two short story collections: Bayou Folk and A Night in Acadie . Her important short stories included "Désirée's Baby" , a tale of miscegenation in antebellum Louisiana, "The Story of an Hour" , and "The Storm" . "The Storm" is a sequel to "At the Cadian Ball," which appeared in her first collection of short stories, Bayou Folk.Chopin also wrote two novels: At Fault and The Awakening , which are set in New Orleans and Grand Isle, respectively. The characters in her stories are usually residents of Louisiana, and many are Creoles of various ethnic or racial backgrounds. Many of her works are set in Natchitoches in north-central Louisiana, a region where she lived.

Within a decade of her death, Chopin was widely recognized as one of the leading writers of her time. In 1915, Fred Lewis Pattee wrote, "some of [Chopin's] work is equal to the best that has been produced in France or even in America. [She displayed] what may be described as a native aptitude for narration amounting almost to genius." Wikipedia  

✵ 8. February 1850 – 22. August 1904  •  Other names كیت شوبان
Kate Chopin photo

Works

The Awakening
Kate Chopin
The Story of an Hour
The Awakening
Kate Chopin
The Story of an Hour
Kate Chopin: 49 quotes3 likes

Famous Kate Chopin Quotes

“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 book The Awakening

Source: The Awakening

“Goodbye -- Because I love you.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

Source: The Awakening

“She could only realize that she herself — her present self — was in some way different from the other self. That she was seeing with different eyes.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

The Awakening (1899)

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

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

Source: The Awakening

“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 book The Awakening

Source: The Awakening

“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 book The Awakening

Source: The Awakening (1899)

Kate Chopin Quotes about life

“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 book The Awakening

Source: 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 book The Awakening

The Awakening (1899)
Source: The Awakening, and Selected Stories
Context: The years that are gone seem like dreams -if one might go on sleeping and dreaming- but to wake up and find -oh! well! perhaps it is better to wake up after all, even to suffer, rather than to remain a dupe to illusions all ones life.

“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 book The Awakening

Source: The Awakening

“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 book The Awakening

Source: The Awakening

“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 book The Awakening

Source: The Awakening

“At a very early period she had apprehended the instinctively the dual life - that outward existence which conforms, the inward life which questions.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

Source: The Awakening

Kate Chopin Quotes about the soul

“And moreover, to succeed, the artist must possess the courageous soul… the brave soul. The soul that dares and defies.”

Kate Chopin

“To be an artist includes much; one must possess many gift -absolute gifts- which have not been acquired by one's effort. And, moreover, to succeed, the artist must possess the courageous soul.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

Source: The Awakening

“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.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

Source: The Awakening (1899)

“The voice of the sea speaks to the soul.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

Source: The Awakening

“The artist must possess the courageous soul that dares and defies”

Kate Chopin

Source: The Awakening and Selected Stories

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

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

Source: The Awakening

Kate Chopin Quotes

“She had resolved never again to belong to another than herself.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

Source: The Awakening (1899)

“The bird that would soar above the plane 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 book The Awakening

Source: The Awakening (1899)

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

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

Source: The Awakening

“The delicious breath of rain was in the air.”

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

“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

Source: The Awakening and Selected Stories

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

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

Source: The Awakening

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

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

Source: The Awakening (1899)

“She's got some sort of notion in her head concerning the eternal rights of women.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

Source: The Awakening

“The city atmosphere certainly has improved her. Some way she doesn't seem like the same woman.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

Source: The Awakening

“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 book The Awakening

Source: The Awakening

“When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease - of the joy that kills.”

Kate Chopin book The Story of an Hour

Source: The Story of an Hour

“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 book The Awakening

Source: The Awakening

“All sense of reality had gone out of her life; she had abandoned herself to fate, and awaited the consequences with indifference.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

The Awakening (1899)

“As she swam she seemed to be reaching out for the unlimited in which to lose herself.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

The Awakening (1899)

“I've been seeing the waves and the white beach of Grand Isle; the quiet, grassy street of the Chênière Caminada; the old sunny fort at Grand Terre. I've been working with a little more comprehension than a machine, and still feeling like a lost soul.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

The Awakening (1899)

“Looking at his wife as one looks at a valuable piece of property which has suffered some damage.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

The Awakening (1899)

“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 book The Awakening

The Awakening (1899)

“Edna wondered if they had all gone mad, to be talking and clamoring at that rate. She herself could think of nothing to say about Mexico or the Mexicans.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

The Awakening (1899)

“The present alone was significant; was hers, to torture her as it was doing then with the biting conviction that she had lost that which she had held, that she had been denied that which her impassioned, newly awakened being demanded.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

The Awakening (1899)

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

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

The Awakening (1899)

“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 book The Awakening

The Awakening (1899)

“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 book The Awakening

The Awakening (1899)

“An indescribable oppression, which seemed to generate in some unfamiliar part of her consciousness, filled her with a vague anguish…like a shadow… a mist passing across her soul's summer day.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

The Awakening (1899)

“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.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

The Awakening (1899)

“You have been a very foolish boy, wasting your time dreaming of impossible things when you speak of Mr. Pontellier setting me free! I am no longer one of Mr. Pontelliere's possessions to dispose of or not. I give myself where I choose. If he were to say, 'here Robert, take her and be happy; she is yours,' I should laugh at you both”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

The Awakening (1899)

“Do you suppose a woman knows why she loves? Does she select? Does she say to herself, 'Go to! here is a distinguished statesman with presidential possibilities; I shall proceed to fall in love with him.' or, 'I shall set my heart upon this musician, whose fame is on every tongue?”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

or 'this financier, who controls the world's money markets?'"
The Awakening (1899)

“The years that are gone seem like dreams -if one might go on sleeping and dreaming- but to wake up and find -oh! well! perhaps it is better to wake up after all, even to suffer, rather than to remain a dupe to illusions all ones life.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

The Awakening (1899)

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