Romances serve but to feed the imagination of the young; they add nothing to the sum of truth.
He observed his hostess attentively from under his shaggy brows, and noted a subtle change which had transformed her from the listless woman he had known into a being who, for the moment, seemed palpitant with the forces of life. Her speech was warm and energetic. There was no repression in her glance or gesture. She reminded him of some beautiful, sleek animal waking up in the sun.
Since I was a girl I always felt as if I would like to write stories. I never had that ambition or shine to make a name; first place because I knew what time and labor it meant to acquire a literary style. Second place, because whenever I wanted to write a story I never could think of a plot.
One misses the sun on a cloudy day without having thought much about the sun when it was shining.
She met the pleasurable things of life with frank, open appreciation, and against distasteful conditions she rebelled. Dissimulation was as foreign to her nature as guile to the breast of a babe, and her rebellious outbreaks, by no means rare, had hitherto been quite open and aboveboard.
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.
A vision of the future like some dim, gaunt monster sometimes appalled her, but luckily to-morrow never comes. Mrs.
There was no one thing in the world that she desired. There was no human being whom she wanted near her except Robert; and she even realized that the day would come when he, too, and the thought of him would melt out of her existence, leaving her alone.
The soul of her youth clamored for its rights; for a share in the world’s glory and exultation.
She would, through habit, have yielded to his desire; not with any sense of submission or obedience to his compelling wishes, but unthinkingly, as we walk, move, sit, stand, go through the daily treadmill of the life which has been portioned out to us.
I’ve been working like a machine, and feeling like a lost soul.
As she swam she seemed to be reaching out for the unlimited in which to lose herself.
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.
A letter concerns no one but the person who writes it and the one to whom it is written.
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.
If her talent had been ten-fold greater than it was, it would not have surprised him, convinced as he was that he had bequeathed to all of his daughters the germs of a masterful capability, which only depended upon their own efforts to be directed toward successful achievement.
She was moved by a kind of commiseration for Madame Ratignolle, -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.
Many had predicted that Robert would devote himself to Mrs. Pontellier when he arrived. Since the age of fifteen, which was eleven years before, Robert each summer at Grand Isle had constituted himself the devoted attendant of some fair dame or damsel. Sometimes it was a young girl, again a widow; but as often as not it was some interesting married woman.
It was the first kiss of her life to which her nature had really responded. It was a flaming torch that kindled desire.
No multitude of words could have been more significant than those moments of silence, or more pregnant with the first-felt throbbings of desire.