Edna Pontellier Quotes

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

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

She had resolved to never take another step backward. ~ Kate Chopin

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. ~ Kate Chopin

Pirate gold isn't a thing to be hoarded or utilized. It is something to squander and throw to the four winds, for the fun of seeing the golden specks fly. ~ Kate Chopin

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

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

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

Dream what you want, and then you can likely create it ~ Edna M. Muse

Take Texas the way Texas takes bourbon. Straight. It goes down easier. ~ Edna Ferber

Science had married the wilderness and was taming the savage shrew. ~ Edna Ferber

As one looks with the beautiful eyes upon a soul ... Only God is perfect ~ Edna Stewart

She had been invited to dinners and luncheons and dances, but their doings, she told Dirk, had bored her.

"They're nice," she said, "but they don't have much fun. They're all trying to be something they're not. And that's such hard work. The women were always explaining that they lived in Chicago because their husband's business was here. They all do things pretty well  -  dance or paint or ride or write or sing  -  but not well enough. They're professional amateurs, trying to express something they don't feel; or that they don't feel strongly enough to make it worth while expressing. ~ Edna Ferber

Ireland is still what novelist Edna O'Brien calls a "pagan place." But that paganism does not conflict with a devout Catholicism that embraces and absorbs it, in a way that can seem mysterious, even heretical, elsewhere. In Ireland, Christianity arrived without lions and gladiators, survived without autos-da-fe and Inquisitions. The old ways were seamlessly bonded to the new, so that ancient rituals continued, ancient divinities became saints, ancient holy sites were maintained just as they had been for generations and generations. ~ Patricia Monaghan

We sat at long tables side by side in a big

dusty room where we laughed and carried

on until they told us to pipe down and paint.

The running joke was how we glowed,

the handkerchiefs we sneezed into lighting

up our purses when we opened them at night,

our lips and nails, painted for our boyfriends

as a lark, simmering white as ash in a dark room.

"Would you die for science?" the reporter asked us,

Edna and me, the main ones in the papers.

Science? We mixed up glue, water and radium

powder into a glowing greenish white paint

and painted watch dials with a little

brush, one number after another, taking

one dial after another, all day long,

from the racks sitting next to our chairs.

After a few strokes, the brush lost its shape,

and our bosses told us to point it with

our lips. Was that science?

I quit the watch factory to work in a bank

and thought I'd gotten class, more money,

a better life, until I lost a tooth in back

and two in front and my jaw filled up with sores.

We sued: Edna, Katherine, Quinta, Larice and me,

but when we got to court, not one of us

could raise our arms to take the oath.

My teeth were gone by then. "Pretty Grace

Fryer," they called me in the papers.

~ Eleanor Swanson

You are loved. If so, what else matters? ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

Irish? In truth I would not want to be anything else. It is a state of mind as well as an actual country. It is being at odds withother nationalities, having quite different philosophy about pleasure, about punishment, about life, and about death. At least it does not leave one pusillanimous. ~ Edna O'Brien

Thoughts
thoughts. Are they not mine?
I think, I write, I type.
Thoughts. Are they wise?
Let truth be told in words, compiled together, create a page, a book.
Thoughts. Are they master piece?
Is it a prize winner? ... An Alfred Nobel?
Thoughts. Are they not mine?
Gift of God?
they are not mine. ~ Edna Stewart

Dilly, do not ever forget your own people." My brother came with me to wait for the mail car. He took off his brown scapulars and gave them to me, it being his way of saying goodbye. "In your letters, better not mention politics," he said. He had a secret life from us, he was a Croppy Boy, so many young men were, but dared not speak of it for fear of informers. ~ Edna O'Brien

On the island of tears, we were subjected to every kind of humiliation, ~ Edna O'Brien

It is impossible to capture the essence of love in writing, only its symptoms remain, the erotic absorption, the huge disparity between the times together and the times apart, the sense of being excluded. ~ Edna O'Brien

I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death; I am not on his pay-roll. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

including Edna Millay, there were five such women: essayist Maeve Brennan, columnist Neith Boyce, novelist Edith Wharton, and social visionary Charlotte Perkins Gilman. ~ Kate Bolick

Second Fig
Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand:
Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand! ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

It was then I cried, cried for the fact of not having cried and for the immensity of tears yet to be shed. ~ Edna O'Brien

Give back my book and take my kiss instead. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

Parrots, tortoises and redwoods live a longer life than men do; Men a longer life than dogs do; Dogs a longer life than love does. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

What could be more exciting! As long as you're fascinated and as long as you keep on fighting the things you think are wrong, you're living. It isn't the evil people in the world who do the most harm. It's the sweet do-nothings that can destroy us. ~ Edna Ferber

her untimely death. Death for her meant death for us both. ~ Edna O'Brien

And as it went my tortured soul
(...) That all about me swirled the dust.

Deep in the earth I rested now,
Cool is its hands upon the brow
And soft its breast beneath the head
Of one who is so gladly dead. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

Edna felt depressed rather than soothed after leaving them. The little glimpse of domestic harmony which had been offered her, gave her no regret, no longing. It was not a condition of life which fitted her, and she could see in it but an apalling and hopeless ennui. 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. ~ Kate Chopin

Curse thee, Life, I will live with thee no more! Thou hast mocked me, starved me, beat my body sore! And all for a pledge that was not pledged by me, I have kissed thy crust and eaten sparingly That I might eat again, and met thy sneers With deprecations, and thy blows with tears, ... ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

There is no God.
But it does not matter.
Man is enough. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

The goat's business is none of the sheep's concern. ~ Edna Ferber

Carpe Diem

By Edna Stewart

Shakespeare, Robert Frost, Walt Whitman did it, why can't I?

The words of Horace, his laconic phrase. Does it amuse me or frighten me?

Does it rub salt in an old wound? Horace, Shakespeare, Robert Frost and Walt Whitman my loves,

we've all had a taste of the devils carpe of forbidden food.

My belly is full of mourning over life mishaps of should have's, missed pleasure, and why was I ever born?

The leaf falls from the trees from which it was born in and cascade down like a feather that tumbles and toil in the wind.

One gush! It blows away. It's trampled, raked, burned and finally turns to ashes which fades away like the leaves of grass.

Did Horace get it right? Trust in nothing?

The shortness of Life is seventy years, Robert Frost and Whitman bared more, but Shakespeare did not.

Butterflies of Curiosities allures me more.

Man is mortal, the fruit is ripe. Seize more my darling!

Enjoy the day. ~ Edna Stewart

That which has quelled me, lives with me, Accomplice in catastrophe. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

If I could have two things in one: the peace of the grave, and the light of the sun. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

You might have written. Every bit of your daily life interests me. I wrote this day fortnight but it was returned. Tampered with. ~ Edna O'Brien

She is happy where she lies
With the dust upon her eyes. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

I hate people but I love gatherings. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

In this unlighted cave, one step forward
That step can be the down-step into the Abyss.
But we, we have no sense of direction; impetus
Is all we have; we do not proceed, we only
Roll down the mountain,
Like disbalanced boulders, crushing before us many
Delicate springing things, whose plan it was to grow. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay