Kate Chopin

Mr. Pontellier had the privilege of quitting their society when they ceased to be entertaining.

If we only have patience to wait through the night, children, be sure that day will break at the close of it.

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.

I boun’ to git well, ’ca’se who⁠—gwine⁠—watch Marse⁠—Chouchoute?

In short, Mrs. Pontellier was not a mother-woman.

Freedom is left for me!

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.

Perhaps it was to drown their cries, or their hunger, or his conscience, or all three.

How few of us ever emerge from such beginning! How many souls perish in its tumult!

She has been rocking ever since.

Who can tell what metals the gods use in forging the subtle bond which we call sympathy, which we might as well call love.

“Oh,” said Babette, “I think they have ripened very late.”

She was flushed and felt intoxicated with the sound of her own voice and the unaccustomed taste of candor.

Because she was no longer beautiful, he loved her.

It was a fixed belief with Madame Lebrun that the conduct of the universe and all things pertaining thereto would have been manifestly of a more intelligent and higher order had not Monsieur Lebrun been removed to other spheres during the early years of their married life.

“It means,” he answered lightly, “that the child is not white; it means that you are not white.”

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.

He sat so close to the blaze that had he been an apple he would have roasted.

The stillest hour of the night had come, the hour before dawn, when the world seems to hold its breath.

But the touch of the caressing baby arms; the pressure of the soft little body in the night; the tones of the voice, and the feeling of the hot lips when the child kissed her, believing herself to be with her mother, were impressions that had sunk through the crust of madame’s prejudice and reached her heart.