Top 160 Kate Chopin Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “The way to become rich is to make money, not to save it.”

— Kate Chopin

Featured in: Making Money Quotes

2. “Goodbye – Because I love you.”

— Kate Chopin

Featured in: Goodbye Quotes

3. “The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace.”

— Kate Chopin

Featured in: Quotes About the Sea

4. “So the storm passed and every one was happy.”

— Kate Chopin

5. “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.”

— Kate Chopin

Featured in: Strong Quotes

6. “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

7. “The voice of the sea is seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander in abysses of solitude.”

— Kate Chopin

8. “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

9. “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.”

— Kate Chopin

10. “Have you ever heard the earth breath?”

— Kate Chopin

11. “She wanted something to happen – something, anything: she did not know what.”

— Kate Chopin

12. “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

13. “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-.”

— Kate Chopin

14. “It is greater than the stars – that moving procession of human energy; greater than the palpitating earth and the things growing thereon.”

— Kate Chopin

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

— Kate Chopin

16. “The peace and beauty of a spring day had descended upon the earth like a benediction.”

— Kate Chopin

17. “We shall be everything to each other. Nothing else shall be of any consequence.”

— Kate Chopin

18. “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 one’s life.”

— Kate Chopin

19. “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

20. “A wedding is one of the most lamentable spectacles on earth.”

— Kate Chopin

21. “I would give up my life for my children, but not myself.”

— Kate Chopin

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

— Kate Chopin

23. “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

Featured in: Romance Quotes

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

— Kate Chopin

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

— Kate Chopin

26. “What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being! Free! Body and soul free! She kept whispering.”

— Kate Chopin

27. “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.”

— Kate Chopin

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

— Kate Chopin

29. “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.”

— Kate Chopin

30. “I should never deem a man of ordinary caliber worthy of my devotion.”

— Kate Chopin

31. “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

32. “She was still under the spell of her infatuation. She had tried to forget him, realizing the inutility of remembering. But the thought of him was like an obsession, ever pressing itself upon her. It was not that she dwelt upon details of their acquaintance, or recalled in any special or peculiar way his personality; it was his being, his existence, which dominated her thought, fading sometimes as if it would melt into the mist of the forgotten, reviving again with an intensity which filled her with an incomprehensible longing.”

— Kate Chopin

33. “A bird with a broken wing was beating the air above, reeling, fluttering, circling disabled, down, down to the water.”

— Kate Chopin

34. “She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome.”

— Kate Chopin

35. “Beside being a respectable woman she was a very sensible one; and she knew there are some battles in life which a human being must fight alone.”

— Kate Chopin

36. “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

37. “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

38. “She said it over and over under her breath: “free, free, free!” The vacant stare and the look of terror that had followed it went from her eyes. They stayed keen and bright. Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body.”

— Kate Chopin

39. “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.”

— Kate Chopin

40. “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

41. “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.”

— Kate Chopin

42. “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.”

— Kate Chopin

43. “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.”

— Kate Chopin

44. “I would give up the unessential; I would give up my money, I would give up my life for my children; but I wouldnt 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

45. “He reproached his wife with her inattention, her habitual neglect of the children. If it was not a mother’s place to look after children, whose on earth was it? He himself had his hands full with his brokerage business.”

— Kate Chopin

46. “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.”

— Kate Chopin

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

— Kate Chopin

48. “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

49. “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.”

— Kate Chopin

Featured in: Strong Quotes

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

— Kate Chopin