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

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

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 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.

The rain beat softly upon the shingles, inviting them to drowsiness and sleep. But they dared not yield. The rain was over; and the sun was turning the glistening world into a palace of gems.

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

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.

I love you, only you; no one but you. It was you who awoke me last summer out of a life-long, stupid dream.

But she laughed and looked at him with eyes that at once gave him courage to wait and made it torture to wait.

Perhaps it is better to wake up after all, even to suffer, rather than to remain a dupe to illusions all one’s life.

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.

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

I hope you won't completely forget me.

She felt that her speech was voicing the incoherency her thoughts, and stopped abruptly.

She was just having a good cry all to herself.

But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely.

The stillest hour of the night had come, the hour before dawn, when the world seems to hold its breath. The moon hung low, and had turned from silver to copper in the sleeping sky.

He could see plainly that she was not herself. That is, he could not see that she was becoming herself [...].

She reminded him of some beautiful, sleek animal waking up in the sun.

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.

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.

I would give up the unessential; I would give my money, I would give my life for my children; but I wouldn't give myself.

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!