Quote

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

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Kate Chopin
Age: 54 †
Born: 1850
Born: February 8
Died: 1904
Died: August 22
Author
Novelist
Translator
Writer
St. Louis
Missouri
Katherine O'Flaherty
Thinking
Woman
Codes
Character
Acquainted
Together
Wicked
Must
Pull
Trying
Convince
Going
Code
Way
Determine
Candidly
Think
Sex
Specimen

More quotes by Kate Chopin

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She was flushed and felt intoxicated with the sound of her own voice and the unaccustomed taste of candor. It muddled her like wine, or like a first breath of freedom.
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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.
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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.
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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?
Kate Chopin
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Goodbye -- Because I love you.
Kate Chopin
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The peace and beauty of a spring day had descended upon the earth like a benediction.
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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.
Kate Chopin
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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
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but whatever came, she had resolved never again to belong to another than herself.
Kate Chopin
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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.
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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?' or 'this financier, who controls the world's money markets?'
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
Kate Chopin
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A certain light was beginning to dawn dimly within her,—the light which, showing the way, forbids it.
Kate Chopin