The Awakening Quotes - Page 2 | Just Great DataBase

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.

A green and yellow parrot, which hung in a cage outside the door, kept repeating over and over: Allez vous-en! Allez vous-en! Sapristi! That’s all right! He could speak a little Spanish, and also a language which nobody understood, unless it was the mockingbird that hung on the other side of the door, whistling his fluty notes out upon the breeze with maddening persistence.

Do you suppose a woman knows why she loves? Does she select?

She liked then to wander alone into strange and unfamiliar places. She discovered many a sunny, sleepy corner, fashioned to dream in.

The heart jealous of the soul!

The flowers were like new acquaintances; she approached them in a familiar spirit, and made herself at home among them.

She felt as if a mist had been lifted from her eyes, enabling her to look upon and comprehend the significance of life, that monster made up of beauty and brutality.

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 [...]

She was seeking herself and finding herself in just such sweet, half-darkness which met her moods. But the voices were not soothing that came to her from the darkness and the sky above and the stars. They jeered and sounded mournful notes without promise, devoid even of hope.

She grew daring and reckless, overestimating her strength. She wanted to swim far out, where no woman had swum before.

I love you. Good-by--because I love you.

I am no longer one of Mr. Pontellier's possessions to dispose of or not.

If ever a fusion of two human beings into one has been accomplished on this sphere it was surely their union.

She seemed to have apprehended all of the composer's coldness and none of his poetry.

The lovers were just entering the grounds of the pension. They were leaning toward each other as the water oaks bent from the sea. There was not a particle of earth beneath their feet. Their heads might have been turned upside down, so absolutely did they tread upon blue ether.

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.

The Doctor...told the old ever-new and curious story of the waning of a woman's love, seeking strange, new channels, only to return to its legitimate source after days of fierce unrest.

She says queer things sometimes in a bantering way that you don’t notice at the time and you find yourself thinking about afterward.

They had been permitted to sit up till after the ice-cream, which naturally marked the limit of human indulgence.

She had all her life long been accustomed to harbor thoughts and emotions which never voiced themselves. They had never taken the form of struggles. They belonged to her and were her own, and she entertained the conviction that she had a right to them and that they concerned no one but herself.

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

If he were to say, 'Here, Robert, take her and be happy; she is yours', I should laugh at you both.

I couldn't help loving you if you were ten times his wife; but so long as I went away from you and kept away I could help telling you so.

One must possess many gifts … which have not been acquired by one’s own effort. And, moreover … the artist must possess the courageous soul.

I have said it before, but I don't think I have ever came so near meaning it.

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.

A general air of surprise and genuine satisfaction fell upon everyone as they saw the pianist enter.

She was fond of her children in an uneven, impulsive way. She would sometimes gather them passionately to her heart; she would sometimes forget them.

His coming was in the nature of a welcome disturbance; it seemed to furnish a new direction for her emotions.

She had resolved to never take another step backward.

There was with her a feeling of having descended in the social scale, with a corresponding sense of having risen in the spiritual.

Don't part from me in any ill humor. I never knew you to be out of patience with me before.

Don't go; don't go! Oh! Edna, stay with me.

Robert's going had some way taken the brightness, the color, the meaning out of everything. The conditions of her life were in no way changed, but her whole existence was dulled, like a faded garment which seems to be no longer worth wearing.

The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in the abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation. The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace.

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

How long will you be gone?""Forever, perhaps. I don't know. It depends upon a good many things.

She wanted to destroy something. The crash and clatter were what she wanted to hear.

She was happy to be alive and breathing, when her whole being seemed to be one with the sunlight, the color, the odors, the luxuriant warmth of some perfect Southern day.

Don't stir all the warmth out of your coffee; drink it.

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.

And the ladies, selecting with dainty and discriminating fingers and a little greedily, all declared that Mr. Pontellier was the best husband in the world. Mrs. Pontellier was forced to admit that she knew of none better.

It was going to be a beautiful morning, I remember thinking, as I left the house; soft and close, bursting with whispered promises, as only a daybreak in early summer can be.

And Nature takes no account of moral consequences, of arbitrary conditions which we create, and which we feel obliged to maintain at any cost.

You are the embodiment of selfishness.

Her marriage to Leonce Pontellier was purely an accident, in this respect resembling many other marriages which masquerade as the decrees of Fate.

His manner invited easy confidence. The preliminary stage of becoming acquainted was one which he always endeavored to ignore when a pretty and engaging woman was concerned.

Mr. Pontellier wore eye-glasses. He was a man of forty, of medium height and rather slender build; he stooped a little. His hair was brown and straight, parted on one side. His beard was neatly and closely trimmed.

One of these days, she said, 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.

The way to become rich is to make money, my dear Edna, not to save it, he said.