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

— Kate Chopin

An indescribable oppression, which seemed to generate in some unfamiliar part of her consciousness, filled her whole being with a vague anguish. It was like a shadow, like a mist passing across her soul's summer day. It was strange and unfamiliar; it was a mood. She did not sit there inwardly upbraiding her husband, lamenting at Fate, which had directed her footsteps to the path which they had taken. She was just having a good cry all to herself.

— Kate Chopin

But the beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, tangled, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing.

— Kate Chopin

Edna felt depressed rather than soothed after leaving them. The little glimpse of domestic harmony which had been offered her, gave her no regret, no longing. It was not a condition of life which fitted her, and she could see in it but an appalling and hopeless ennui. She was moved by a kind of commiseration for Madame Rationale, - 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. Edna vaguely wondered what she meant by "life's delirium." It had crossed her thought like some unsought, extraneous impression.

— Kate Chopin

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 Mandela 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.

— Kate Chopin

Her husband seemed to her now like a person whom she had married without love as an excuse.

— Kate Chopin

I leave such ventures ti you younger men with the fever of life still in your blood.

— Kate Chopin

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.

— Kate Chopin

It seems to me if I were young and in love I should never deem a man of ordinary caliber worthy of my devotion.

— Kate Chopin

It sometimes entered Mr. Montpellier's mind to wonder if his wife were not growing a little unbalanced mentally. 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