Цитаты из книги Пробуждение

"You have been a very, very foolish boy, wasting your time dreaming of impossible things when you speak of Mr. Pontellier setting me free! I am no longer one of Mr. Pontellier's possessions to dispose of or not. I give myself where I choose. If he were to say, 'Here, Robert, take her and be happy; she is yours,' I should laugh at you both."

"... She won't go to the marriage. She says a wedding is one of the most lamentable spectacles on earth. Nice thing for a woman to say to her husband!" exclaimed Mr. Pontellier, fuming anew at the recollection.

“I would give up the unessential; I would give up my money, I would give up my life for my children; but I wouldn't give myself. I can't make it more clear; it's only something I am beginning to comprehend, which is revealing itself to me.”

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

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.

Прикосновение моря чувственно, оно окутывает тело мягкими, тесными объятиями.

Сегодня вечером меня охватили тысячи эмоций. Я не понимаю и половины из них.

Голос моря обращается к душе. Прикосновение моря чувственно, окутывая тело своими нежными, тесными объятиями.

Она наклонилась и поцеловала его — нежный, прохладный, нежный поцелуй, сладострастная боль которого пронзила все его существо.

Бывали дни, когда она чувствовала себя несчастной, сама не зная почему, – когда казалось не стоило радоваться или печалиться, быть живой или мёртвой; когда жизнь представлялась ей чудовищным адом, а человечество – червями, слепо борющимися с неминуемою гибелью. В такой день она не могла ни работать, ни плести фантазии, чтобы взбудоражить сердце и согреть кровь.

Она становилась собой и ежедневно отбрасывала то фиктивное «я», которое мы надеваем, словно одежду, в которой предстаём перед миром

Голос моря соблазнителен: он не умолкает, шепчет, кричит, бормочет, приглашая душу на мгновение погрузиться в пучину одиночества, затеряться в лабиринтах внутреннего созерцания.

“WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH YOU?” asked Arobin that evening. “I never found you in such a happy mood.” Edna was tired by that time, and was reclining on the lounge before the fire. “Don’t you know the weather prophet has told us we shall see the sun pretty soon?” “Well, that ought to be reason enough,” he acquiesced.

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. The old owl no longer hooted, and the water-oaks had ceased to moan as they bent their heads.

“but whatever came, she had resolved never again to belong to another than herself.”

Every step which she took toward relieving herself from obligations added to her strength and expansion as an individual. She began to look with her own eyes; to see and to apprehend the deeper undercurrents of life. No longer was she content to "feed upon opinion" when her own soul had invited her.

"Authority, coercion are what is needed. Put your foot down good and hard; the only way to manage a wife. Take my word for it." The Colonel was perhaps unaware that he had coerced his own wife into her grave.

The mother-women seemed to prevail that summer at Grand Isle. It was easy to know them, fluttering about with extended, protecting wings when any harm, real or imaginary, threatened their precious brood. They were women who idolized their children, worshiped their husbands, and esteemed it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals and grow wings as ministering angels.