Explore the most impactful and insightful quotes and sayings by Charlotte Bronte, and enrich your perspective with the wisdom. Share these inspiring Charlotte Bronte quotes pictures with your friends on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, or your personal blogs, completely free. Here are the top 772 Charlotte Bronte quotes for you to read and share.
His wife might, I verily believe, be the very happiest woman the sun shines on -- Charlotte Bronte
I perceive all this, and believe that you were born under my star. Yes, you were born under my star! Tremble! for where that is the case with mortals, the threads of their destinies are difficult to disentangle; knottings and catchings occur - sudden breaks leave damage in the web. -- Charlotte Bronte
I was a precocious actress in her eyes; she sincerely looked on me as a compound of virulent passions, mean spirit, and dangerous duplicity. -- Charlotte Bronte
Sometimes I half fall asleep when I am sitting alone and fancy things that have never happened. -- Charlotte Bronte
Suspense is irksome, disappointment bitter. -- Charlotte Bronte
No severe or prolonged bodily illness followed this incident of the red-room: it only gave my nerves a shock, of which I feel the reverberation to this day. -- Charlotte Bronte
Mr. Brocklehurst, who, from his wealth and family connections, could not be overlooked, still retained the post of treasurer; but he was aided in the discharge of his duties by gentlemen of rather more enlarged and sympathising minds: -- Charlotte Bronte
That bitter hour cannot be described: in truth, the waters came into my soul; I sank in deep mire: I felt no standing; I came into deep waters; the floods overflowed me. -- Charlotte Bronte
There are people who seem to have no notion of sketching a character, or observing and describing salient points, either in persons or things: -- Charlotte Bronte
He must love such a handsome, noble, witty, accomplished lady; and probably she loves him, or, if not his person, at least his purse -- Charlotte Bronte
While I looked, my inner self moved; my spirit shook its always-fettered wings half loose; I had a sudden feeling as if I, who never yet truly lived, were at last about to taste life. In that morning my soul grew as fast as Jonah's gourd. -- Charlotte Bronte
What will you do with your accomplishments? What, with the largest portion of your mind - sentiments - tastes?" "Save them till they are wanted. They will keep. -- Charlotte Bronte
I don't wish to treat you like an inferior: that is (correcting himself), I claim only such superiority as must result from twenty years' difference in age and a century's advance in experience. -- Charlotte Bronte
You - you strange - you almost unearthly thing! - I love as my own flesh. You - poor and obscure, and small and plain as you are - I entreat to accept me as a husband. -- Charlotte Bronte
There are certain natures of which the mutual influence is such, that the more they say, the more they have to say. For these out of association grows adhesion, and out of adhesion, amalgamation. -- Charlotte Bronte
Now for the hitch in Jane's character,' he said at last, speaking more calmly than from his look I had expected him to speak. 'The reel of silk has run smoothly enough so far; but I always knew there would come a knot and a puzzle: here it is. Now for vexation, and exasperation, and endless trouble! -- Charlotte Bronte
You have introduced a topic on which our natures are at variance
a topic we should never discuss: the very name of love is an apple of discord between us. If the reality were required, what should we do? How should we feel? My dear cousin, abandon your scheme of marriage
forget it. -- Charlotte Bronte
I knew, you would do me good, in some way, at some time;- I saw it in your eyes when I first beheld you: their expression and smile did not- (again he stopped)- did not (he proceeded hastily) strike delight to my very inmost heart so for nothing. -- Charlotte Bronte
Yet it would be your duty to bear it, if you could not avoid it: it is weak and silly to say you cannot bear what it is your fate to be required to bear. -- Charlotte Bronte
I Believe she thought I had forgotten my station; and yours, sir.'
'Station! Station!
your station is in my heart, and on the necks of those who would insult you, now or hereafter. -- Charlotte Bronte
Lingerer, my brain is on fire with impatience; and you tarry so long! -- Charlotte Bronte
So this subject is done with. It is right to look our life-accounts bravely in the face now and then, and settle them honestly -- Charlotte Bronte
Strange that I should choose you for the confidante of all this, young lady; passing strange that you should listen to me quietly, as if it were the most usual thing in the world for a man like me to tell stories of his opera - mistress to a quaint, inexperienced girl like you! -- Charlotte Bronte
Enjoy the blessings Heaven bestows, Assist his friends, forgive his foes; Trust God, and keep his statutes still, Upright and firm, through good and ill; Thankful for all that God has given, Fixing his firmest hopes on heaven; Knowing that earthly joys decay, But hoping through the darkest day. -- Charlotte Bronte
Too often do reviewers remind us of the mob of Astrologers, Chaldeans, and Soothsayers gathered before 'the writing on the wall' and unable to read the characters or make known the interpretation. -- Charlotte Bronte
My love has placed her little hand With noble faith in mine, And vowed that wedlock's sacred band Our nature shall entwine. My love has sworn, with sealing kiss, With me to live
to die; I have at last my nameless bliss: As I love
loved am I! -- Charlotte Bronte
I am anchored on a resolve you cannot shake. My heart, my conscience shall dispose of my hand
they only. Know this at last. -- Charlotte Bronte
Good-night, Dr. John; you are good, you are beautiful; but you are not mine. Good-night and God bless you! -- Charlotte Bronte
I grant an ugly woman is a blot on the fair face of creation; but as to the gentleman, let them be solicitous to possess only strength and valour: let their motto be:Hunt, shoot, and fight: the rest is not worth a flip. -- Charlotte Bronte
I'm a universal patriot ... my country is the world. -- Charlotte Bronte
Reason, indeed, may oft complain For Nature's sad reality, And tell the suffering heart how vain Its cherished dreams must always be; And Truth may rudely trample down The flowers of Fancy, newly-blown: -- Charlotte Bronte
All is changed about me, sir; I must change too. -- Charlotte Bronte
Was conscious that a moment's mutiny had already rendered me liable to strange penalties, and, like any other rebel slave, I felt resolved, in my desperation, to go all lengths. -- Charlotte Bronte
I am, as Miss Scatcherd said, slatternly; I seldom put, and certainly never keep, things in order; I am careless; I forget rules; I read when I should learn my lessons; I have no method; and sometimes I say, like you, I cannot bear to be subjected to systematic arrangements. -- Charlotte Bronte
Look here; to gain some real affection from you, or Miss Temple, or any other whom I truly love, I would willingly submit to have the bone of my arm broken, or to let a bull toss me, or to stand behind a kicking horse, and let it dash its hoof at my chest - -- Charlotte Bronte
All my heart is yours, sir: it belongs to you; and with you it would remain, were fate to exile the rest of me from your presence forever. -- Charlotte Bronte
I had not intended to love him; the reader knows I had wrought hard to extirpate from my soul the germs of love there detected; and now, at the first renewed view of him, they spontaneously revived, great and strong! He made me love him without looking at me. -- Charlotte Bronte
Mr. Rochester had again summoned the ladies round him, and was selecting certain of their number to be of his party. "Miss Ingram is mine, of course," said he: afterwards he named the two Misses Eshton, and Mrs. Dent. He looked at me: I happened to be near him, as I had been fastening -- Charlotte Bronte
There are certain phrases potent to make my blood boil
improper influence! What old woman's cackle is that?"
"Are you a young lady?"
"I am a thousand times better: I am an honest woman, and as such I will be treated. -- Charlotte Bronte
Ill-Success failed to crush us: the mere effort to succeed had given a wonderful zest to existence; it must be pursued. -- Charlotte Bronte
Breakfast was over, and none had breakfasted. -- Charlotte Bronte
The passions may rage furiously, like true heathens, as they are; and the desires may imagine all sorts of vain things: but judgement shall still have the last word in every argument, and the casting vote in every decision. -- Charlotte Bronte
Nervous alarms should always be communicated, that they may be dissipated. -- Charlotte Bronte
Jane Austin was a complete and most sensible lady, but a very incomplete and rather insensible (not senseless) woman. If this is heresy, I cannot help it. -- Charlotte Bronte
God waits only the separation of spirit from flesh to crown us with a full reward. Why, then, should we ever sink overwhelmed with distress, when life is so soon over, and death is so certain an entrance to happiness
to glory? -- Charlotte Bronte
Brainless and vicious youth whom I had sometimes met in society, and had never thought of hating because I despised him so absolutely. -- Charlotte Bronte
Do you like him much?'
I told you I liked him a little. Where is the use of caring for him so very much: he is full of faults.'
Is he?'
All boys are. -- Charlotte Bronte
It would take a great deal to crush me -- Charlotte Bronte
A pointed illustration indeed of the old adage that "extremes meet". -- Charlotte Bronte
[O]ur honeymoon will shine our life long: its beams will only fade over your grave or mine. -- Charlotte Bronte
Whenever I went out, I heard on all sides cordial salutations, and was welcomed with friendly smiles. To live amidst general regard, though it be but the regard of working people, is like 'sitting in sunshine, calm, and sweet': serene inward feelings bud and bloom under the ray. -- Charlotte Bronte
For, however old, plain, humble, desolate, afflicted we may be, so long as our hearts preserve the feeblest spark of life, they preserve also, shivering near that pale ember, a starved, ghostly longing for appreciation and affection. -- Charlotte Bronte
You mocking changeling- fairy-born and human-bred! -- Charlotte Bronte
Picture me then idle, basking, plump, and happy, stretched on a cushioned deck, warmed with constant sunshine, rocked by breezes indolently soft. -- Charlotte Bronte
You have never been married? You are a spinster?" Diana laughed. "Why, she can't be above seventeen or eighteen years old, St. John," said she. "I am near nineteen: but I am not married. No. -- Charlotte Bronte
And if I let a gust of wind or a sprinkling of rain turn me aside from these easy tasks, what preparation would such sloth be for the future I propose to myself? -- Charlotte Bronte
It is a long way off, sir"
"From what Jane?"
"From England and from Thornfield: and _"
"Well?"
"From you, sir -- Charlotte Bronte
It was a day of winter east wind, and I had now for some time entered into that dreary fellowship with the winds and their changes, so little known, so incomprehensible by the healthy. The north and east owned a terrific influence, making all pain more poignant, all sorrow sadder. -- Charlotte Bronte
A wanderer's repose or a sinner's reformation should never depend on a fellow-creature. Men and women die; philosophers falter in wisdom, and Christians in goodness: if any one you know has suffered and erred, let him look higher than his equals for strength to amend and solace to heal. -- Charlotte Bronte
Do you read your Bible?" "Sometimes." "With pleasure? Are you fond of it?" "I like Revelations, and the book of Daniel, and Genesis and Samuel, and a little bit of Exodus, and some parts of Kings and Chronicles, and Job and Jonah." "And the Psalms? I hope you like them?" "No, sir. -- Charlotte Bronte
God did not give me my life to throw it away. -- Charlotte Bronte
The promise of a smooth career, which my first calm introduction to Thornfield Hall seemed to pledge, was not belied on a longer acquaintance with the place and its inmates. -- Charlotte Bronte
Crying does not indicate that you are weak. Since birth, it has always been a sign that you are alive. -- Charlotte Bronte
I was a human being, and had a human being's wants: I must not linger where there was nothing to supply them. -- Charlotte Bronte
After a youth and manhood passed half in unutterable misery and half in dreary solitude, I have for the first time found what I can truly love
I have found you. -- Charlotte Bronte
Is that the summit of earthly happiness, the end of life - to love? I don't think it is. It may be the extreme of mortal misery, it may be sheer waste of time, and fruitless torture of feeling. -- Charlotte Bronte
I scorn your idea of love,' I could not help saying, as I rose up and stood before him, leaning my back against the rock. 'I scorn the counterfeit sentiment you offer: yes, St. John, and I scorn you when you offer it. -- Charlotte Bronte
Poverty, for me, is synonymous with degradation. -- Charlotte Bronte
I think I shall like you again, and yet again: and I will make you confess I do not only like, but love you
with truth, fervour, constancy. -- Charlotte Bronte
That I have wakened out of most glorious dreams, and found them all void and vain, is a horror I could bear and master -- Charlotte Bronte
I have no wish to talk nonsense."
"If you did, it would be in such a grave, quiet manner, I should mistake it for sense. -- Charlotte Bronte
Once I saw Graham - wholly unconscious of her proximity - push her with his restless foot. She receded an inch or two. A minute after one little hand stole out from beneath her face, to which it had been pressed, and softly caressed the heedless foot. -- Charlotte Bronte
I like to see flowers growing, but when they are gathered, they cease to please. I look on them as things rootless and perishable; their likeness to life makes me sad. I never offer flowers to those I love; I never wish to receive them from hands dear to me. -- Charlotte Bronte
Make my happiness , i will make yours . let no man prevent me , i have her and i will keep her. -- Charlotte Bronte
But, Jane, I summon you as my wife: it is you only I intend to marry. -- Charlotte Bronte
I am disposed to be as content as a queen, and you try to stir me up to restlessness! To what end?
To the end of turning to profit the talents which God has committed to your keeping; and of which he will surely one day demand a strict account. -- Charlotte Bronte
It was in looking up at him her aspect had caught its lustre - the light repeated in her eyes beamed first out of his. -- Charlotte Bronte
If there is one notion I hate more than another, it is that of marriage - I mean marriage in the vulgar, weak sense, as a mere matter of sentiment. -- Charlotte Bronte
Unheard-of combinations of circumstances demand unheard-of rules. -- Charlotte Bronte
I honour endurance, perseverance, industry, talent; because these are the means by which men achieve great ends and mount to lofty eminence. -St.John Rivers -- Charlotte Bronte
This pure little drop from a pure little source was too sweet: it penetrated deep, and subdued the heart -- Charlotte Bronte
Mine was the game where the player cannot lose and may win. -- Charlotte Bronte
I can so dearly distinguish between the criminal and his crime; I can so sincerely forgive the first while abhor the last -- Charlotte Bronte
I have to live, perhaps, till seventy years. As far as I know, I have good health. Half a century of existence may lie before me. How am I to occupy it? What am I to do to fill the interval of time which spreads between me and the grave? -- Charlotte Bronte
Do you think me, because I am poor, obscure, plain and little, I am soulless and heartless? -- Charlotte Bronte
My home is humble and unattractive to strangers, but to me it contains what I shall find nowhere else in the world - the ... affection which brothers and sisters feel for each other. -- Charlotte Bronte
And who threw it, then?" continued Rosine, speaking quite freely the very words I should so much have wished to say, but had no address or courage to bring it out: how short some people make the road to a point which, for others, seems unattainable! "That -- Charlotte Bronte
The spring which moved my energies lay far away beyond seas, in an Indian isle. -- Charlotte Bronte
People talk of natural sympathies ; I have heard of good genii ; there are grains of truth in the wildest fable. -- Charlotte Bronte
I believe in some blending of hope and sunshine sweetening the worst lots. I believe that this life is not all; neither the beginning nor the end. I believe while I tremble; I trust while I weep. -- Charlotte Bronte
I could bend you with my finger and my thumb. A mere reed you feel in my hands. But whatever I do with this cage, I cannot get at you, and it is your soul that I want. -- Charlotte Bronte
Then the curtain rises, and you will see the girl to whom I am going to give all my life, to whom I have given everything that is good in me. -- Charlotte Bronte
I ask you to pass through life at my side - to be my second self, and best earthly companion. -- Charlotte Bronte
I had now swallowed my tea. I was mightily refreshed by the beverage; as much so as a giant with wine: it gave new tone to my unstrung nerves, and enabled me to address this penetrating young judge steadily. -- Charlotte Bronte
It is not violence that best overcomes hate
nor vengeance that most certainly heals injury. -- Charlotte Bronte
Well; I would rather die yonder than in a street, or on a frequented road, ' I reflected. 'And far better that crows and ravens -if any ravens there be in these regions- should pick my flesh from my bones, than that they should be prisoned in a work-house coffin, and moulder in a pauper's grave. -- Charlotte Bronte
I will be your neighbour, your nurse, your housekeeper. I find you lonely: I will be your companion
to read to you, to walk with you, to sit with you, to wait on you, to be eyes and hands to you. Cease to look so melancholy, my dear master; you shall not be left desolate, so long as I live. -- Charlotte Bronte
I both wished and feared to see Mr. Rochester on the day which followed this sleepless night. I wanted to hear his voice again, yet feared to meet his eye. -- Charlotte Bronte
For once a hope was realized. I held in my hand a morsel of real solid joy: not a dream, not an image of the brain, not one of those shadowy chances imagination pictures, and on which humanity starves but cannot live -- Charlotte Bronte
And she held out a pretty gold ring. 'Put it,' she said, 'on the fourth finger of my left hand, and I am yours and you are mine; and we shall leave Earth and make our own Heaven yonder.' -- Charlotte Bronte
The idea of seeing the sea - of being near it - watching its changes by sunrise, sunset, moonlight, and noonday - in calm, perhaps in storm - fills and satisfies my mind. -- Charlotte Bronte
It is far better to endure patiently a smart which nobody feels but yourself,
than to commit a hasty action whose evil consequences will extend to all
connected with you. -- Charlotte Bronte
He is not a ghost; yet every nerve I have is unstrung: for a moment I am beyond my own mastery. What does it mean? I did not think I should tremble in this way when I saw him, or lose my voice or the power of motion in his presence. -- Charlotte Bronte
For my part, I am almost contented just now, and very thankful. Gratitude is a divine emotion: it fills the heart, but not to bursting: it warms it, but not to fever. I like to taste leisurely of bliss: devoured in haste, I do not know its flavour. -- Charlotte Bronte
I see at intervals the glance of a curious sort of bird through the close set bars of a cage: a vivid, restless, resolute captive is there; were it but free, it would soar cloud-high. -- Charlotte Bronte
Oh, I am not going to die, am I? He will not separate us, we have been so happy. -- Charlotte Bronte
appearance should not be mistaken for truth -- Charlotte Bronte
We know that God is everywhere; but certainly we feel His presence most when His works are on the grandest scale spread before us; and it is in the unclouded night-sky, where His worlds wheel their silent course, that we read clearest His infinitude, His omnipotence, His omnipresence. -- Charlotte Bronte
Whether it is right or advisable to create beings like Heathcliff, I do not know: I scarcely think it is. -- Charlotte Bronte
My heart is mute--my heart is mute -- Charlotte Bronte
I know what it is to live entirely for and with what I love best on earth. I hold myself supremely blest
blest beyond what language can express; because I am my husband's life as fully as he is mine. -- Charlotte Bronte
I see on your cheek two tears which I know are hot as two sparks, and salt as two crystals of the sea. -- Charlotte Bronte
Well, then, with Miss Temple you are good?"
"Yes, in a passive way: I make no effort; I follow as inclination guides me. There is no merit in such goodness. -- Charlotte Bronte
Little Jane's love would have been my best reward, without it, my heart is broken. -- Charlotte Bronte
I turned my lips to the hand that lay on my shoulder. I loved him very much - more than I could trust myself to say - more than words had power to express -- Charlotte Bronte
Die without me if you will. Live for me if you dare. -- Charlotte Bronte
The soul, fortunately, has an interpreter - often an unconscious but still a faithful interpreter - in the eye. -- Charlotte Bronte
He was the first to recognise me, and to love what he saw. -- Charlotte Bronte
I found Burns, absorbed, silent, abstracted from all around her by the companionship of a book, which she read by the dim glare of the embers. -- Charlotte Bronte
Fortune is proverbially called changeful, yet her caprice often takes the form of repeating again and again a similar stroke of luck in the same quarter. -- Charlotte Bronte
Jane, I never meant to wound you thus ... Will you ever forgive me?
Reader, I forgave him at the moment and on the spot. -- Charlotte Bronte
If he were insane, however, his was a very cool and collected insanity. -- Charlotte Bronte
Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour ... If at my convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? -- Charlotte Bronte
But don't pull me down or strangle me, he replied: for the Misses Eshton were clinging about him now; and the two dowagers, in vast white wrappers, were bearing down on him like ships in full sail. -- Charlotte Bronte
If I let a gust of wind or a sprinkling of rain turn me aside from the easy tasks, what preparation would such sloth be for the future I propose myself? -- Charlotte Bronte
Some of the best people that ever lived have been as destitute as I am; and if you are a Christian, you ought not to consider poverty a crime. -- Charlotte Bronte
Missis was, she dared say, glad enough to get rid of such a tiresome, ill-conditioned child, who always looked as if she were watching everybody, and scheming plots underhand. Abbot, I think, gave me credit for being a sort of infantine Guy Fawkes. -- Charlotte Bronte
Happiness is not a potato. -- Charlotte Bronte
He wrote because he liked to write; he did not abridge, because he cared not to abridge. He sat down, he took pen and paper, because he loved Lucy and had much to say to her; because he was faithful and thoughtful, because he was tender and true. -- Charlotte Bronte
Where, indeed, does the moon not look well? What is the scene, confined or expansive, which her orb does not hallow? -- Charlotte Bronte
I believe it would take two Labassecourien carpenters to drive a nail. -- Charlotte Bronte
Left alone, I was passive; repulsed, I withdrew; forgotten - my lips would not utter, nor my eyes dart a reminder. -- Charlotte Bronte
Lucy, has he not rather the air of an incipient John Bull? He used to be slender as an eel, and now I fancy in him a sort of heavy dragoon bent - a beef-eater tendency. Graham, take notice! If you grow fat I disown you. -- Charlotte Bronte
Bessie asked if I would have a book: the word book acted as a transient stimulus, and I begged her to fetch Gulliver's Travels from the library. This book I had again and again perused with delight. -- Charlotte Bronte
Jane, be still; don't struggle so like a wild, frantic bird, that is rending its own plumage in its desperation."
"I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being, with an independent will; which I now exert to leave you. -- Charlotte Bronte
I looked, and had an acute pleasure in looking,
a precious yet poignant pleasure; pure gold, with a steely point of agony: a pleasure like what the thirst-perishing man might feel who knows the well to which he has crept is poisoned, yet stoops and drinks divine draughts nevertheless. -- Charlotte Bronte
There were in it metaphors as monstrous as orchids, and as subtle in color. The life of the senses was
described in the terms of mystical philosophy. One hardly knew at times whether one was reading the spiritual ecstasies of some medieval saint or the
morbid confessions of a modern sinner. -- Charlotte Bronte
Would you not be happier if you tried to forget her severity, together with the passionate emotions it excited? Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity, or registering wrongs. - Helen Burns -- Charlotte Bronte
You think I have no feelings, and that I can do without one bit of love or kindness; but I cannot live so: and you have no pity. -- Charlotte Bronte
A loving eye is all the charm needed: to such you are handsome enough; or rather your sternness has a power beyond beauty. -- Charlotte Bronte
Bessie, you must promise not to scold me any more till I go." "Well, I will; but mind you are a very good girl, and don't be afraid of me. Don't start when I chance to speak rather sharply; it's so provoking. -- Charlotte Bronte
When first I saw Isidore, I believed he would help me to enjoy it I believed he would be content with my being a pretty girl; and that we should meet and part and flutter about like two butterflies, and be happy -- Charlotte Bronte
All John Reed's violent tyrannies, all his sisters' proud indifference, all his mother's aversion, all the servants' partiality, turned up in my disturbed mind like a dark deposit in a turbid well. -- Charlotte Bronte
Why was I always suffering, always browbeaten, always accused, for ever condemned? Why could I never please? Why was it useless to try to win anyone's favour? -- Charlotte Bronte
A present has many faces to it, has it not? and one should consider all, before pronouncing an opinion as to its nature. -- Charlotte Bronte
I am not an angel,' I asserted; 'and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself. Mr. Rochester, you must neither expect nor exact anything celestial of me - for you will not get it, any more than I shall get it of you: which I do not at all anticipate. -- Charlotte Bronte
Against legitimacy is arrayed usurpation; against modest,
single-minded, righteous, and brave resistance to encroachment
is arrayed boastful, double-tongued, selfish, and treacherous
ambition to possess. God defend the right!"
"God often defends the powerful. -- Charlotte Bronte
To this crib I always took my doll; human beigns must love something, and, in the dearth of worthier objects of affection, I contrived to find a pleasure in loving and cherishing a faded graven image, shabby as a miniature scarecrow -- Charlotte Bronte
You think all existence lapses in a quiet flow as that in which your youth has hitherto slid away -- Charlotte Bronte
One suffers in silence so long as one has the strength and when that strength fails one speaks without measuring one's words much. -- Charlotte Bronte
Error
brought remorse, and you pronounced remorse the poison of
existence -- Charlotte Bronte
To me, he was in reality become no longer flesh, but marble; his eye was a cold, bright, blue gem; his tongue a speaking instrument - nothing more. -- Charlotte Bronte
On the contrary, I'm a universal patriot, if you could understand me rightly: my country is the world. -- Charlotte Bronte
What tale do you like best to hear?' 'Oh, I have not much choice! They generally run on the same theme - courtship; and promise to end in the same catastrophe - marriage. -- Charlotte Bronte
my heart swells with gratitude to the beneficent God of this earth just now. He sees not as man sees, but far clearer: judges not as man judges, but far more wisely. -- Charlotte Bronte
I could not answer the ceaseless inward question-why I thus suffered; now, at the distance of-I will not say how many years, I see it clearly. -- Charlotte Bronte
But I don't mean to flatter you: if you are cast in a different mould to the majority, it is no merit of yours: Nature did it. -- Charlotte Bronte
Well had Solomon said,'Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith. -- Charlotte Bronte
Having a large world of his own in his own head and heart, he tolerated confinement to a small, still corner of the real world very patiently. -- Charlotte Bronte
I am the only being whose doom no tongue would ask, no eye would mourn. -- Charlotte Bronte
Every joy that life gives must be earned ere it be secured; and how hardly earned, those only know who have wrestled for great prizes. The heart's blood must gem with red beads the brow of the combatant, before the wreath of victory rustles over it. -- Charlotte Bronte
Quit that chatter you block head and do my bidding. -- Charlotte Bronte
Shake me off, then, sir
push me away; for I'll not leave you of my own accord. -- Charlotte Bronte
Yet, when M. Paul sneered at me, I wanted to possess them more fully; his injustice stirred in me ambitious wishes - it imparted a strong stimulus - it gave wings to aspiration. -- Charlotte Bronte
I can live alone, if self-respect, and circumstances require me so to do. I need not sell my soul to buy bliss. I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all extraneous delights should be withheld, or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give. -- Charlotte Bronte
I do not think, sir, you have any right to command me, merely because you are older than I, or because you have seen more of the world than I have; your claim to superiority depends on the use you have made of your time and experience. -- Charlotte Bronte
Signs may be but the sympathies of nature with man. -- Charlotte Bronte
If I spoke all I think on this point, if I gave my real opinion of some first-rate female characters in first-rate works, where should I be? Dead under a cairn of avenging stones in half an hour. -- Charlotte Bronte
Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs. -- Charlotte Bronte
Thought fitted thought; opinion met opinion: we coincided, in short, perfectly. -- Charlotte Bronte
The human and fallible should not arrogate a power with which the divine and perfect alone can be safely intrusted. -- Charlotte Bronte
It agitates me that the skyline there is forever our limit, I long for the power of unlimited vision ... If I could behold all I imagine. -- Charlotte Bronte
It would not be wicked to love me."
"It would to obey you. -- Charlotte Bronte
Now, when any vicious simpleton excites my disgust by his paltry ribaldry ... -- Charlotte Bronte
A sorrowful indifference to existence often pressed on me
a despairing resignation to reach betimes the end of all things earthly -- Charlotte Bronte
I again felt rather like an individual of but average gastronomical powers, sitting down to feast alone at a table spread with provisions for a hundred. -- Charlotte Bronte
I doubt if I have made the best use of all my calamities. Soft, amiable natures they would have refined to saintliness; of strong, evil spirits they would have made demons; as for me, I have only been a woe-struck and selfish woman. -- Charlotte Bronte
One moment longer," whispered solitude and the summer moon, "stay with us: all is truly quiet now; for another quarter of an hour your presence will not be missed: the day's heat and bustle have tired you; enjoy these precious minutes. -- Charlotte Bronte
Till morning dawned I was tossed on a buoyant but unquiet sea, where billows of trouble rolled under surges of joy. -- Charlotte Bronte
I regained my couch, but never thought of sleep. Till morning dawned I was tossed on a buoyant but unquiet sea, where billows of trouble rolled under surges of joy. I thought sometimes I saw beyond its wild waters a shore, sweet as the hills of Beulah -- Charlotte Bronte
Stale details often regain a degree of freshness when they pass through new lips. -- Charlotte Bronte
What you had left before I saw you, of course I do not know; but I counsel you to resist firmly every temptation which would incline you to look back: pursue your present career steadily, for some months at least -- Charlotte Bronte
If there was a hope of comfort for any moment, the heart or head of no human being in this house could yield it ... -- Charlotte Bronte
He means to marry you?" "He tells me so." She surveyed my whole person: in her eyes I read that they had there found no charm powerful enough to solve the enigma. -- Charlotte Bronte
In the name of all the elves in Christendom, is that Jane Eyre? -- Charlotte Bronte
Youth has its romance, and maturity its wisdom, as morning and spring have their freshness, noon and summer their power, night and winter their repose. Each attribute is good in its own season. -- Charlotte Bronte
It did not seem as if a prop were withdrawn, but rather as if a motive were gone: it was not the power to be tranquil which had failed me, but the reason for tranquility was no more. -- Charlotte Bronte
I am not writing to flatter paternal egotism, to echo cant, or prop up humbug; I am merely telling the truth. -- Charlotte Bronte
It can never be, sir; it does not sound likely. Human beings never enjoy complete happiness in this world. I was not born for a different destiny to the rest of my species: To imagine such a lot befalling me is a fairy tale - a day-dream. -- Charlotte Bronte
Human beings never enjoy complete happiness in this world. I was not born for a different destiny to the rest of my species: to imagine such a lot befalling me is a fairy tale
a daydream."
"Which I can and will realise. I shall begin today. -- Charlotte Bronte
It is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal, - as we are!'
'As we are!' repeated Mr. Rochester -- Charlotte Bronte
The cool peace and dewy sweetness of the night filled me with a mood of hope: not hope on any definite point, but a general sense of encouragement and heart-ease. -- Charlotte Bronte
My rest might have been blissful enough, only a sad heart broke it. -- Charlotte Bronte
He turned away; he threw himself on his face on the sofa. 'Oh, Jane! my hope - my love - my life!' broke in anguish from his lips. -- Charlotte Bronte
The horizon bounded by a propitious sky, azure, marbled with pearly white. -- Charlotte Bronte
I assured him I was naturally hard - very flinty, and that he would often find me so; and that, moreover, I was determined to show him divers rugged points in my character -- Charlotte Bronte
It seems to me, Monsieur, that there is nothing more galling in great physical misfortunes than to be compelled to make all those about us share in our sufferings. The ills of the soul one can hide, but those which attack the body and destroy the faculties cannot be concealed. -- Charlotte Bronte
My state of mind, and all accompanying circumstances, were just now such as most to favour the adoption of a new, resolute, and daring - perhaps desperate - line of action. I had nothing to lose. -- Charlotte Bronte
No fear of death will darken St. John's last hour: his mind will be unclouded, his heart will be undaunted, his hope will be sure, his faith steadfast. -- Charlotte Bronte
There is nothing like taking all you do at a moderate estimate: it keeps mind and body tranquil; whereas grandiloquent notions are apt to hurry both into fever. -- Charlotte Bronte
Once I have fairly seized you, to have and to hold, I'll just -figuratively speaking - attach you to a chain like this' (touching his watchguard). 'Yes, bonny wee thing, I'll wear you in my bosom, lest my jewel I should tyne. -- Charlotte Bronte
What have I to do with millions [of people]? The eighty I know despise me. -- Charlotte Bronte
Starved and tired enough he was: but he looked happier than when he set out. He had performed an act of duty; made an exertion; felt his own strength to do and deny, and was on better terms with himself. -- Charlotte Bronte
You know full well as I do the value of sisters' affections: There is nothing like it in this world. -- Charlotte Bronte
Consistency, madam, is the first of Christian duties. -- Charlotte Bronte
You had no right to be born; for you make no use of life. Instead of living for, in, and with yourself, as a reasonable being ought, you seek only to fasten your feebleness on some other person's strength. -- Charlotte Bronte
I considered; my life was so wretched it must be changed, or I must die. After a season of darkness and struggling, light broke and relief fell. My cramped existence all at once spread out to a plain without bounds ... -- Charlotte Bronte
He felt the greatness and goodness of his purpose so sincerely: others who heard him plead for it, could not but feel it too. -- Charlotte Bronte
Life is still life, whatever its pangs; our eyes and ears and their use remain with us, though the prospect of what pleases be wholly withdrawn, and the sound of what consoles must be silenced. -- Charlotte Bronte
All the melody on earth is concentrated in my Jane's tongue to my ear (I am glad it is not a naturally silent one): all the sunshine I can feel is in her presence. -- Charlotte Bronte
Well, what did he want?"
"Merely to tell you that your uncle, Mr. Eyre of Madeira, is dead; that he has left you all his property, and that you are now rich
merely that
nothing more. -- Charlotte Bronte
Accustomed to John Reed's abuse, I never had an idea of replying to it; my care was how to endure the blow which would certainly follow the insult. -- Charlotte Bronte
Ever after that I knew what I was for him; and what I might be for the rest of the world, I ceased painfully to care. -- Charlotte Bronte
There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. -- Charlotte Bronte
My feelings towards it can only be paralleled by that of a doting parent towards an idiot child. -- Charlotte Bronte
If he does go, the change will be doleful. Suppose he should be absent spring, summer, and autumn: how joyless sunshine and fine days will seem! -- Charlotte Bronte
Spring drew on ... and a greenness grew over those brown beds, which, freshening daily, suggested the thought that Hope traversed them at night, and left each morning brighter traces of her steps. -- Charlotte Bronte
Genius is said to be self-conscious. -- Charlotte Bronte
Nothing refines like affection. Family jarring vulgarizes - family union elevates. -- Charlotte Bronte
After the play, after the play', said M. Paul. 'I will then divide my pair of pistols between you, and we will settle the dispute according to form. -- Charlotte Bronte
What I am, it is useless to say - those whom it concerns feel and find it out. To all others I wish only to be an obscure, steady-going private character. -- Charlotte Bronte
It is vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility; they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it. -- Charlotte Bronte
Yet," suggested the secret voice which talks to us in our own hearts, "you are not beautiful either, and perhaps Mr. Rochester approves you: at any rate, you have often felt as if he did; and last night - remember his words; remember his look; remember his voice! -- Charlotte Bronte
Wicked and cruel boy! I said. You are like a murderer - you are like a slave-driver - you are like the Roman emperors! -- Charlotte Bronte
Yes Mrs Reed, to you i owe some fearful pangs of mental suffering, but i ought to forgive you, for you knew not what you did while rendering my heart strings, you thought you were only uprooting your bad propensities. -- Charlotte Bronte
I scorned the insinuation of helplessness and distraction, shook off his hand, and began to walk about again. -- Charlotte Bronte
Good-night, my- He stopped, bit his lip, and abruptly left me. -- Charlotte Bronte
You can write nothing of value unless you give yourself wholly to the the theme
and when you so give yourself
you lose appetite ans sleep
it cannot be helped
-- Charlotte Bronte
A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow. -- Charlotte Bronte
Love is real
the most real, the most lasting, the sweetest and yet the bitterest thing we know. -- Charlotte Bronte
My future husband was becoming to me my whole world; and more than the world: almost my hope of heaven. He stood between me and every thought of religion, as an eclipse intervenes between man and the broad sun. I could not, in those days, see God for His creature: of whom I had made an idol. -- Charlotte Bronte
But life is a battle: may we all be enabled to fight it well! -- Charlotte Bronte
You both think I know not what,' said I. 'Have the goodness to make me as little the subject of your mutual talk and thoughts as possible. I have my own sort of life apart from yours. -- Charlotte Bronte
Jane accept me quickly. Say, Edward - give me my name - Edward - I will marry you. -- Charlotte Bronte
Jane, will you marry me?"
"Yes sir."
"A poor blind man, whom you will have to lead about by the hand?"
"Yes, sir."
"A crippled man, twenty years older older than you, whom you will have to wait on?"
"Yes, sir."
"Truly, Jane?"
"Most truly, sir. -- Charlotte Bronte
We can burst the bonds which chain us,
Which cold human hands have wrought,
And where none shall dare restrain us
We can meet again, in thought. -- Charlotte Bronte
Fire rises out of the lunar mountains: when she is cold, I'll carry her up to a peak, and lay her down on the edge of a crater. -- Charlotte Bronte
I often think it would be such luxury to go mad, and not have to worry about anything. Others would have to worry for me, about me. -- Charlotte Bronte
Call anguish
anguish, and despair
despair; write both down in strong characters with a resolute pen: you will the better pay your debt to Doom. -- Charlotte Bronte
At eighteen most people wish to please, and the conviction that they have not an exterior likely to second that desire brings anything but gratification. -- Charlotte Bronte
I wanted to be weak that I might avoid the awful passage of further suffering I saw laid out for me -- Charlotte Bronte
Flattery would be worse than vain; there is no consolation in flattery. -- Charlotte Bronte
I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will. -- Charlotte Bronte
Wise people say it is folly to think anybody perfect; and as to likes and dislikes, we should be friendly to all, and worship none -- Charlotte Bronte
Jane: "St John dresses well. He is a handsome man: tall, fair, with blue eyes and a Grecian profile."
Rochester:(Aside) "Damn him!" (To me) "Did you like him, Jane? -- Charlotte Bronte
I can but die ... and I believe in God. Let me try and wait His will in silence. -- Charlotte Bronte
Jane, I don't like cavillers or questioners; besides, there is something truly forbidding in a child taking up her elders in that manner. -- Charlotte Bronte
You are human and fallible. -- Charlotte Bronte
It is true I little respect women or girls who are loquacious either in boasting the triumphs, or bemoaning the mortifications, of feelings. -- Charlotte Bronte
Adversity is a good school. -- Charlotte Bronte
Sacrifice! What do I sacrifice? Famine fo food, expectation for content. To be privileged to put my arms round what I value
to press my lips to what I love
to repose on what I trust: is that to make a sacrifice? If so, then certainly I delight in sacrifice. - Jane -- Charlotte Bronte
Thank you, Mr. Rochester, for your great kindness. I am strangely glad to get back again to you: and wherever you are is my home - my only home. -- Charlotte Bronte
Take my love. One day share my life. Be my dearest, first on earth. -- Charlotte Bronte
Give him enough rope and he will hang himself. -- Charlotte Bronte
You have rather the look of another world. I marvelled where you had got that sort of face. -- Charlotte Bronte
Not a tie hold me to human society at this moment - not a charm or hope calls me where my fellow-creatures are - none that saw me would have a kind thought or a good wish for me. I have no relative but the universal mother, Nature. -- Charlotte Bronte
Human feelings are queer things
I am much happier
black-leading the stove's
making the beds and sweeping the floors at home, than I should be living like a fine lady anywhere else. -- Charlotte Bronte
A waft of wind came sweeping down the laurel-walk, and trembled through the boughs of the chestnut: it wandered away-away-to an indefinite distance-it died. The nightingale's song was then the only voice of the hour: in listening to it, I again wept. -- Charlotte Bronte
It was my time to assume ascendency. My powers were in-play and in force. I told him to forbear question or remark; I desired him to leave me: I must and would be alone. He obeyed at once. Where there is energy to command well enough, obedience never fails. -- Charlotte Bronte
I took a book - some Arabian tales; I sat down and endeavoured to read. I could make no sense of the subject; my own thoughts swam always between me and the page I had usually found fascinating. -- Charlotte Bronte
I heard the gallop of a horse at a distance on the road; I was sure it was you; and you were departing for many years and for a distant country. -- Charlotte Bronte
This is a terrible hour, but it is often that darkest point which precedes the rise of day; that turn of the year when the icy January wind carries over the waste at once the dirge of departing winter, and the prophecy of coming spring. -- Charlotte Bronte
I had feelings: passive as I lived, little as I spoke, cold as I looked, when I thought of past days, I could feel. About the present, it was better to be stoical; about the future - such a future as mine - to be dead. -- Charlotte Bronte
I try to avoid looking forward or backward, and try to keep looking upward. -- Charlotte Bronte
Love me, then, or hate me, as you will," I said at last, "you have my full and free forgiveness: ask now for God's, and be at peace. -- Charlotte Bronte
What can you mean? It may be of no moment to you; you have sisters and don't care for a cousin; but I had nobody; and now three relations, - or two, if you don't choose to be counted, - are born into my world full-grown. I say again, I am glad! -- Charlotte Bronte
The writer who possesses the creative gift of fantasy owns something of which he is not always master; something that, at times, strangely wills and works for itself. -- Charlotte Bronte
Who has words at the right moment? -- Charlotte Bronte
As much goodwill may be conveyed in one hearty word as in many. -- Charlotte Bronte
Hopeless of the future, I wished but this- that my Maker had that night thought good to require my soul of me while I slept; and that this weary frame, absolved by death from further conflict with fate, had now but to decay quietly, and mingle in peace with the soil of this wilderness. -- Charlotte Bronte
I shall never more know the sweet homage given to beauty, youth and grace - for never to any else shall I seem to possess these charms. -- Charlotte Bronte
I am paving hell with energy... I am laying down good intentions which I believe durable as flint. -- Charlotte Bronte
I am sure, sir, I should never mistake informality for insolence: one I rather like, the other nothing free-born would submit to, even for a salary -- Charlotte Bronte
The human heart has hidden treasures, In secret kept, in silence sealed; The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures, Whose charms were broken if revealed. -- Charlotte Bronte
How sad to be lying now on a sick bed, and to be in danger of dying! This world is pleasant - it would be dreary to be called from it, and to have to go who knows where? -- Charlotte Bronte
How all my brain was in tumult, and all my heart in insurrection! Yet in what darkness, what dense ignorance, was the mental battle fought! -- Charlotte Bronte
had had no communication by letter or message with the outer world: school-rules, school-duties, school-habits and notions, and voices, and faces, and phrases, and costumes, and preferences, and antipathies - such was what I knew of existence. -- Charlotte Bronte
Reader, I married him. A quiet wedding we had: he and I, the parson and clerk, were alone present. -- Charlotte Bronte
To prolong doubt was to prolong hope. -- Charlotte Bronte
His veins were dark with a vivid belladonna tincture, the essence of jealousy. -- Charlotte Bronte
This girl who stands so quiet and grave at the mouth of hell. This girl who is all quietness and sanity and innocence. You wondered why I wanted her? -- Charlotte Bronte
Mark my words - you will come some day to a craggy pass in the channel, where the whole of life's stream will be broken up into whirl and tumult, foam and noise: either you will be dashed to atoms on crag points, or lifted up and borne on by some master-wave into a calmer current - as I am now. -- Charlotte Bronte
you will come some day to a craggy pass in the channel, where the whole of life's stream will be broken up into whirl and tumult, foam and noise: either you will be dashed to atoms on crag points, or lifted up and borne on by some master-wave into a calmer current - as -- Charlotte Bronte
[M]y inner self moved; my spirit shook its always-fettered wings half loose. I had a sudden feeling as if I, who never yet truly lived, were at last about to taste life. -- Charlotte Bronte
Presentiments are strange things: and so are sympathies; and so are signs; and the three combined make one mystery to which humanity had not yet found the key. -- Charlotte Bronte
Some have won a wild delight,
By daring wilder sorrow;
Could I gain thy love to-night,
I'd hazard death to-morrow. -- Charlotte Bronte
Come, Miss Jane, don't cry,' said Bessie, as she finished. She might as well have said to the fire, 'Don't burn!' but how could she divine the morbid suffering to which I was a prey? -- Charlotte Bronte
Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last. -- Charlotte Bronte
What delusion has come over me? What sweet madness has seized me? -- Charlotte Bronte
He took on their insolent pride the revenge of the purest charity - housing, caring for, befriending them, so as no son could have done it more tenderly and efficiently. -- Charlotte Bronte
Something real, cool, and solid, lies before you something unromantic as Monday morning, when all who have work wake with the consciousness that they must rise and betake themselves thereto. -- Charlotte Bronte
We wove a web in childhood, A web of sunny air; We dug a spring in infancy Of water pure and fair; We sowed in youth a mustard seed, We cut an almond rod; We are now grown up to riper age- Are they withered in the sod? -- Charlotte Bronte
It is one of my faults, that though my tongue is sometimes prompt enough at an answer, there are times when it sadly fails me in framing an excuse; and always the lapse occurs at some crisis, when a facile word or plausible pretext is specially wanted to get me out of painful embarrassment. -- Charlotte Bronte
I shall be thirty-one next birthday. My youth is gone like a dream; and very little use have I ever made of it. What have I done these last thirty years? Precious little. -- Charlotte Bronte
The eagerness of a listener quickens the tongue of a narrator. -- Charlotte Bronte
With what judgment ye judge ye shall be judged! -- Charlotte Bronte
You left him a sup o' wine, I hope, Bob" (turning to Mr. Moore), "to keep his courage up? -- Charlotte Bronte
The mere pouring out of some portion of long accumulating, long pent-up pain into a vessel whence it could not again be diffused
had done me good. I was already solaced. -- Charlotte Bronte
Whatever my powers
feminine or the contrary
God had given them, and I felt resolute to be ashamed of no faculty of his bestowal. -- Charlotte Bronte
Monsieur, sit down; listen to me. I am not a heathen, I am not hard-hearted, I am not unchristian, I am not dangerous, as they tell you; I would not trouble your faith; you believe in God and Christ and the Bible, and so do I. -- Charlotte Bronte
I am unhappy - very unhappy, for other things. -- Charlotte Bronte
Oh, that fear of his self-abandonment - far worse than my abandonment - how it goaded me! It was a barbed arrow-head in my breast; it tore me when I tried to extract it; it sickened me when remembrance thrust it farther in. -- Charlotte Bronte
Human beings
human children especially
seldom deny themselves the pleasure of exercising a power which they are conscious of possessing, even though that power consist only in a capacity to make others wretched -- Charlotte Bronte
It is good to be attracted out of ourselves, to be forced to take a near view of the sufferings, the privations, the efforts, the difficulties of others. -- Charlotte Bronte
You should hear mama on the chapter of governesses: Mary and I have had, I should think, a dozen at least in our day; half of them detestable and the rest ridiculous, and all incubi - were they not, mama? Blanche Ingram -- Charlotte Bronte
I had a theoretical reverence and homage for beauty, elegance, gallantry, fascination but had I met those qualities incarnate in masculine shape, I should have known instinctively that they had nor could have sympathy with anything in me ... -- Charlotte Bronte
I had not, it seems, the originality to chalk out a new road to shame and destruction, but trode the old track with stupid exactness not to deviate an inch from the beaten centre. -- Charlotte Bronte
At heart, he could not abide sense in women: he liked to see them as silly, as light-headed, as vain, as open to ridicule as possible; because they were then in reality what he held them to be, and wished them to be,
inferior: toys to play with, to amuse a vacant hour and to be thrown away. -- Charlotte Bronte
True enthusiasm is a fine feeling whose flash I admire where-ever I see it. -- Charlotte Bronte
Don't cling so tenaciously to ties of the flesh; save your constancy and ardour for an adequate cause; forbear to waste them on trite transient objects. -- Charlotte Bronte
Now here (he pointed to the leafy enclosure we had entered) all is real, sweet, and pure -- Charlotte Bronte
Night was come, and her planets were risen: a safe, still night: too serene for the companionship of fear. -- Charlotte Bronte
I am sure there is a future state; I believe God is good; I can resign my immortal part to Him without any misgiving. God is my father; God is my friend: I love Him; I believe He loves me. -- Charlotte Bronte
The floodgates of tears are opened, and they would rush out if you spoke much. -- Charlotte Bronte
If we would build on a sure foundation in friendship, we must love our friends for their sakes rather than for our own. -- Charlotte Bronte
And it is madness in all women to let a secret love kindle within them, which, if unreturned and unknown, must devour the life that feeds it ... -- Charlotte Bronte
If you don't love another living soul, then you'll never be disappointed. -- Charlotte Bronte
Rochester: I am to take mademoiselle to the moon, and there I shall seek a cave in one of the white valleys among the volcano-tops, and mademoiselle shall live with me there, and only me. -- Charlotte Bronte
I think I must admit so fair a guest when it asks entrance to my heart. -- Charlotte Bronte
I will tell you it is my neck you are putting in peril; for whatever is yours is, in a dearer and tenderer sense, mine. -- Charlotte Bronte
Make my happiness--I will make yours. -- Charlotte Bronte
And it is you, spirit
with will and energy, and virtue and purity
that I want, not alone with your brittle frame. -- Charlotte Bronte
When you are inquisitive, Jane, you always make me smile. You open your eyes like an eager bird, and make every now and then a restless movement, as if answers in speech did not flow fast enough for you, and you wanted to read the tablet of one's heart. -- Charlotte Bronte
My bride is here ... because my equal is here and my likeness ... come to me- come to me entilrely now ... make my happiness- I will make yours -- Charlotte Bronte
I am not deceitful: if I were, I should say I loved you; but I declare I do not love you: I dislike you the worst of anybody in the world. -- Charlotte Bronte
-Let respect be the foundation, affection the first floor, love the superstructure; Mdlle Reuters is a skillful architect.
- And interest?
-yes, no doubt; it will be the cement between every stone! -- Charlotte Bronte
You, Jane, I must have you for my own
entirely my own. -- Charlotte Bronte
Jane! will you hear reason?' (he stooped and approached his lips to my ear) 'because, if you won't, I'll try violence. -- Charlotte Bronte
I would always rather be happy than dignified. -- Charlotte Bronte
But, in my opinion, if I am not formed for love, it follows that I am not formed for marriage. -- Charlotte Bronte
I have little left in myself
I must have you. The world may laugh
may call me absurd, selfish
but it does not signify. My very soul demands you: it will be satisfied, or it will take deadly vengeance on its frame. -- Charlotte Bronte
But when one does not complain, and when one wants to master oneself with a tyrant's grip - one's faculties rise in revolt - and one pays for outward calm with an almost unbearable inner struggle. -- Charlotte Bronte
You know nothing about me, and nothing about the sort of love which I am capable. -- Charlotte Bronte
Your grasp, even in fury, would have a charm for me ... -- Charlotte Bronte
You never felt jealousy, did you, Miss Eyre? Of course not: I need not ask you; because you never felt love. You have both sentiments yet to experience: your soul sleeps; the shock is yet to be given which shall waken it. -- Charlotte Bronte
Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear. -- Charlotte Bronte
Better be generally in love with all than specially with one, I should think ... -- Charlotte Bronte
I had learnt to love Mr. Rochester: I could not unlove him now, merely because I found that he had ceased to notice -- Charlotte Bronte
The vehemence of emotion, stirred by grief and love within me, was claiming mastery, and struggling for full sway; and asserting a right to predominate: to overcome, to live, rise, and reign at last; yes,
and to speak. -- Charlotte Bronte
That to begin with; let respect be the foundation, affection the first floor, love the superstructure. -- Charlotte Bronte
I must, then, repeat continually that we are forever sundered - and yet, while I breathe and think, I must love him.'
- Jane Eyre -- Charlotte Bronte
I've always known myself. But he was the first to recognize me. And to love what he saw. -- Charlotte Bronte
Your mind is my treasure, and if it were broken, it would be my treasure still -- Charlotte Bronte
But I feel this, Helen: I must dislike those who, whatever I do to please them, persist in disliking me; I must resist those who punish me unjustly. It is as natural as that I should love those who show me affection, or submit to punishment when I feel it is deserved. -- Charlotte Bronte
Strange that grief should now almost choke me, because another human being's eye has failed to greet mine. -- Charlotte Bronte
Cheerfulness, it would appear,
is a matter which depends fully as much on the state
of things within,
as on the state of things without and around us. -- Charlotte Bronte
There are not unfrequently substantial reasons underneath for customs that appear to us absurd; and if I were ever again to find myself amongst strangers, I should be solicitous to examine before I condemned. -- Charlotte Bronte
I am not romantic. I am stripped of romance as bare as the white tenters in that field are of cloth. -- Charlotte Bronte
I did what human beings do instinctively when they are driven to utter extremity - looked for aid to one higher than man: the words "God help me!" burst involuntarily from my lips. -- Charlotte Bronte
I like the spirit of this great London which I feel around me. Who but a coward would pass his whole life in hamlets; and for ever abandon his faculties to the eating rust of obscurity? -- Charlotte Bronte
I thought not. And so you were waiting for your people when you sat on that stile?" "For whom, sir? -- Charlotte Bronte
Such absolute impenetrability is past comprehension -- Charlotte Bronte
Everything in life seems unreal. -- Charlotte Bronte
Renewed hope followed renewed effort: It shone like the former for some weeks, then, like it, faded, flickered: Not a line, not a word reached me. When half a year wasted in vain expectancy, my hope died out, and then I felt dark indeed. -- Charlotte Bronte
Propensities and principles must be reconciled by some means. -- Charlotte Bronte
I and my pupil dined -- Charlotte Bronte
Flirting is a woman's trade, one must keep in practice. -- Charlotte Bronte
Her coming was my hope each day, Her parting was my pain; The chance that did her steps delay Was ice in every vein. -- Charlotte Bronte
Mademoiselle St. Pierre always presided at M. Emanuel's lessons, and I was told that the polish of her manner, her seeming attention, her tact and grace, impressed that gentleman very favourably. -- Charlotte Bronte
His mind has the clearness of the deep sea, the patience of its rocks, the force of its billows. -- Charlotte Bronte
Good fortune opens the hand as well as the heart wonderfully; and to give somewhat when we have largely received, but to afford a vent to the unusual ebullition of the sensations. -- Charlotte Bronte
The trouble is not that I am single and likely to stay single, but that I am lonely and likely to stay lonely. -- Charlotte Bronte
The longer we live, the more our experience widens; the less prone are we to judge our neighbor's conduct. -- Charlotte Bronte
Do not let me think of them too often, too much, too fondly,' I implored: 'let me be content with a temperate draught of this living stream: let me not run athirst, and apply passionately to its welcome waters: let me not imagine in them a sweeter taste than earth's fountains know. -- Charlotte Bronte
I know my maker sanctions what I do. For the world's judgement - I wash my hands thereof. For man's opinion- I defy it -- Charlotte Bronte
Old maids like the houseless and unemployed poor, should not ask for a place and an occupation in the world: the demand disturbs the happy and the rich. -- Charlotte Bronte
And where is the speaker? Is it only a voice? Oh! I cannot see, but I must feel, or my heart will stop and my brain burst. Whatever - whoever you are - be perceptible to the touch or I cannot live! -- Charlotte Bronte
Reader, I married him. -- Charlotte Bronte
If I failed in what I now designed to undertake, who, save myself, would suffer? -- Charlotte Bronte
I am a free human being with an independent will.
Jane Eyre -- Charlotte Bronte
I'll borrow of imagination what reality will not give me. -- Charlotte Bronte
No; you shall tear yourself away, none shall help you: you shall yourself pluck out your right eye; yourself cut off your right hand: your heart shall be the victim, and you the priest to transfix it. -- Charlotte Bronte
A depressing and difficult passage has prefaced every page I have turned in life. -- Charlotte Bronte
To the Public, for the indulgent ear it has inclined to a plain tale with few pretensions. -- Charlotte Bronte
I had enjoyed so much bliss lately that i imagined my fortune had passed its meridian and must now decline. -- Charlotte Bronte
Into the hands of common sense I confided the matter. Common sense, however, was as chilled and bewildered as all my other faculties, and it was only under the spur of an inexorable necessity that she spasmodically executed her trust. -- Charlotte Bronte
Of late years an abundant shower of curates has fallen upon the North of England. -- Charlotte Bronte
I might have been different, I might have been as good as you - wiser - almost stainless. I envy your peace of mind, your clean conscience, your unpolluted memory. -- Charlotte Bronte
I have been wrongly accused; and you, ma'am, and everybody else, will now think me wicked."
"We shall think you what you prove yourself to be, my child. Continue to act as a good girl, and you will satisfy us. -- Charlotte Bronte
Nobody in particular is to blame, that I can see, for the state in which things are ... -- Charlotte Bronte
As far as my experience of matrimony goes
I think it tends to draw you out of, and away from yourself. -- Charlotte Bronte
There is, I am convinced, no picture that conveys in all its dreadfulness, a vision of sorrow, despairing, remediless, supreme. If I could paint such a picture, the canvas would show only a woman looking down at her empty arms. -- Charlotte Bronte
My fine visions are all very well, but I must not forget they are absolutely unreal. I have a rosy sky and a green flowery Eden in my brain; but without, I am perfectly aware, lies at my feet a rough tract to travel, and around me gather black tempests to encounter. -- Charlotte Bronte
Gentle, soft dream, nestling in my arms now, you will fly, too, as your sisters have all fled before you: but kiss me before you go
embrace me, Jane. -- Charlotte Bronte
It strikes me with terror and anguish to feel I absolutely must be torn from you for ever. I see the necessity of departure; and it is like looking on the necessity of death. -- Charlotte Bronte
You do not know how the people of this country bear malice. It is the boast of some of them that they can keep a stone in their pocket seven years, turn it at the end of that time, keep it seven years longer, and hurl it and hit their mark at last. -- Charlotte Bronte
I seemed to hold two lives - the life of thought, and that of reality; and, provided the former was nourished with a sufficiency of the strange necromantic joys of fancy, the privileges of the latter might remain limited to daily bread, hourly work, and a roof of shelter. -- Charlotte Bronte
Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilised by education: they grow there, firm as weeds among stones. -- Charlotte Bronte
Self abandoned, relaxed and effortless, I seemed to have laid me down in the dried-up bed of a great river; I heard a flood loosened in remote mountains, I felt the torrent come; to rise I had no will, to flee I had no strength. -- Charlotte Bronte
Writers cannot choose their own mood: with them it is not always hide-tide, nor
thank Heaven!
always Storm. -- Charlotte Bronte
Poetry destroyed? Genius banished? No! Mediocrity, no: do not let envy prompt you to the thought. No; they not only live, but reign, and redeem: and without their divine influence spread everywhere, you would be in hell
the hell of your own meanness. -- Charlotte Bronte
Dr. John, throughout his whole life, was a man of luck - a man of success. And why? Because he had the eye to see his opportunity, the heart to prompt to well-timed action, the nerve to consummate a perfect work. And no tyrant-passion dragged him back; no enthusiasms, no foibles encumbered his way. -- Charlotte Bronte
The rooks cawed, and blither birds sang; but nothing was so merry or so musical as my own rejoicing heart. -- Charlotte Bronte
Sir, your wife is living; that is a fact acknowledged this morning by yourself. If I lived with you as you desire, I should then be your mistress; to say otherwise is sophistical
is false. -- Charlotte Bronte
Happiness is the cure - a cheerful mind the preventive: cultivate both. No mockery in this world ever sounds to me so hollow as that of being told to cultivate happiness. What does such advice mean? Happiness is not a potato, to be planted in mould, and tilled with manure. -- Charlotte Bronte
He that is low need fear no fall. -- Charlotte Bronte
Where the Northern Ocean, in vast whirls,
Boils round the naked, melancholy isles
Of farthest Thule; and the Atlantic surge
Pours in among the stormy Hebrides. -- Charlotte Bronte
His chest heaved once, as if his large heart, weary of despotic constriction, had expanded, despite the will, and made a vigorous bound for the attainment of liberty. -- Charlotte Bronte
Jane Eyre, who had been an ardent, expectant woman - almost a bride, was a cold, solitary girl again: her life was pale; her prospects were desolate. -- Charlotte Bronte
Make my happiness - I will make yours. God pardon me!" he subjoined ere long; "and man meddle not with me: I have her and will hold her. -- Charlotte Bronte
Am I hideous, Jane? Very, sir: you always were, you know. -- Charlotte Bronte
Mademoiselle is a fairy, he said, whispering mysteriously. -- Charlotte Bronte
Sweet-briar and southern-wood, jasmine, pink, and rose have long been yielding their evening sacrifice of incense: this new scent is neither of shrub nor flower; it is - I know it well - it is Mr. Rochester's cigar. -- Charlotte Bronte
Memory in youth is active and easily impressible; in old age it is comparatively callous to new impressions, but still retains vividly those of earlier years. -- Charlotte Bronte
A preface to the first edition of "Jane Eyre" being unnecessary, I gave none: this second edition demands a few words both of acknowledgment and miscellaneous remark. -- Charlotte Bronte
Not one thought was to be given either to the past or the future. The first was a page so heavenly sweet - so deadly sad - that to read one line of it would dissolve any courage and break down my energy. The last was an awful blank: something like the world when the deluge was gone by. -- Charlotte Bronte
Work or suffering found her listless and dejected, powerles and repining; but gaiety expanded her butterfly's wings, lit up their gold-dust and bright spots, made her flash like a gem, and flush like a flower. -- Charlotte Bronte
It is in vain to say human beings -- Charlotte Bronte
I had a keen delight in receiving the new ideas he offered, in imagining the new pictures he portrayed, and following him in thought through the new regions he disclosed, never startled or troubled by one noxious allusion. -- Charlotte Bronte
All the room darkened and my heart again sank; inexpressible sadness weighed it down -- Charlotte Bronte
Millions of marriages are unhappy; if everybody confessed the truth, perhaps all are more or less so. -- Charlotte Bronte
Nor did I reflect that some herbs, though scentless when entire, yield fragrance when they're bruised. -- Charlotte Bronte
Alas! never had I loved him so well! -- Charlotte Bronte
I envy you your peace of mind, your clean conscience, your unpolluted memory. Little girl, a memory without blot of contamination must be an exquisite treasure-an inexhaustible source of pure refreshment: is it not? -- Charlotte Bronte
Oh madam, when you put bread and cheese, instead of burnt porridge, into these children's mouths, you may indeed feed their vile bodies, but you little think how you starve their immortal souls! -- Charlotte Bronte
I am no bird, no net ensnares me. -- Charlotte Bronte
Two hot, close rooms thus became my world; and a crippled old woman, my mistress, my friend, my all. Her service was my duty - her pain, my suffering - her relief, my hope - her anger, my punishment - her regard, my reward. -- Charlotte Bronte
Let your performance do the thinking. -- Charlotte Bronte
A beauty neither of fine colour nor long eyelash, nor pencilled brow, but of meaning, of movement, of radiance. -- Charlotte Bronte
These things and deeds are diametrically opposed: they are as distinct as is vice from virtue. Men too often confound them: they should not be confounded: -- Charlotte Bronte
Little things recall us to earth. The clock struck in the hall; that sufficed. I turned from the moon and the stars, opened a side door, and went in. -- Charlotte Bronte
The world may not like to see these ideas dissevered, for it has been accustomed to blend them; finding it convenient to make external show pass for sterling worth - to let white-washed walls vouch for clean shrines. -- Charlotte Bronte
I recalled the voice I had heard; again I questioned whence it came, as vainly as before: it seemed in me not in the external world. I asked, was it a mere nervous impression a delusion? I could not conceive or believe: it was more like an inspiration. -- Charlotte Bronte
Thanks are due in three quarters. To the Public, for the indulgent ear it has inclined to a plain tale with -- Charlotte Bronte
I believe that creature is a changeling: she is a perfect cabinet of oddities. -- Charlotte Bronte
Sir,' I interrupted him, 'you are inexorable for that unfortunate lady; you speak of her with hate
with vindictive antipathy. It is cruel
she cannot help being mad. -- Charlotte Bronte
My help had been needed and claimed; I had given it: I was pleased to have done something: trivial, transitory though the deed was, it was yet an active thing, and I was weary of an existence all passive. -- Charlotte Bronte
I see that you laugh rarely though you could be naturally joyful , you control your features , and you fear on the presence of men to smile too cheerfully , speak too freely or move too quickly. -- Charlotte Bronte
The second Mrs. Helstone, inversing the natural order of insect existence, would have fluttered through the honeymoon a bright, admired butterfly, and crawled the rest of her days a sordid trampled worm. -- Charlotte Bronte
I have a right to get pleasure out of life: and I will get it, cost what it may." "Then you will degenerate still more, sir. -- Charlotte Bronte
The charm of variety there was not, nor the excitement of incident; but I liked peace so well, and sought stimulus so little, that when the latter came I almost felt it a disturbance, and rather still wished it had held aloof. -- Charlotte Bronte
This little man was of the order of beings who must not be opposed, unless you possessed an all-dominant force sufficient to crush him at once. -- Charlotte Bronte
But afterwards, is there nothing more for me in life - no true home - nothing to be dearer to me than myself? -- Charlotte Bronte
Who told you I was called Carl David?" "A little bird, Monsieur." "Does it fly from me to you? Then one can tie a message under its wing when needful. -- Charlotte Bronte
Women are supposed to be calm generally: but women feel just as men feel ... -- Charlotte Bronte
I know poetry is not dead, nor genius lost; nor has Mammon gained power over either, to bind or slay: they will both assert their existence, their presence, their liberty and strength again one day. -- Charlotte Bronte
Mr. Rochester, I no more assign this fate to you than I grasp at it for myself. We were born to strive and endure - you as well as I: do so. You will forget me before I forget you. -- Charlotte Bronte
I don't like cavillers or questioners; besides, -- Charlotte Bronte
beauty is in the eye of the gazer." My -- Charlotte Bronte
She had a turn for narrative, I for analysis; she liked to inform, I to question; so we got on swimmingly together, deriving much entertainment, if not much improvement, from our mutual intercourse. -- Charlotte Bronte
To you I am neither man nor woman. I come before you as an author only. It is the sole standard by which you have a right to judge me
the sole ground on which I accept your judgment. -- Charlotte Bronte
I feared nothing but interruption, and that came too soon. -- Charlotte Bronte
There are certain things in which we so rarely meet with our double that it seems a miracle when that chance befalls. -- Charlotte Bronte
Most things free-born will submit to anything for a salary. -- Charlotte Bronte
And I do not want a stranger - unsympathising, alien, different from me; I want my kidred: those with whom I have a full fellow-feeling. -- Charlotte Bronte
But what is so headstrong as youth? What so blind as inexperience? -- Charlotte Bronte
You are afraid of me, because I talk like a sphinx. -- Charlotte Bronte
To speak truth, reader, there is no excellent beauty, no accomplished grace, no refinement, without strength as excellent, as complete, as trustworthy. -- Charlotte Bronte
But are you sure you are not in the position of those conquerors whose triumphs have cost them too dear? -- Charlotte Bronte
If he expects me to talk for the mere sake of talking and showing off, he will find he has addressed himself to the wrong person. -- Charlotte Bronte
I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad - as I am now. -- Charlotte Bronte
Out of obscurity I came, to obscurity I can easily return. -- Charlotte Bronte
...but I believed in the existence of other and more vivid kinds of goodness, and what I believed in I wished to behold. -- Charlotte Bronte
A man is master of himself to a certain point, but not beyond it. -William Crimsworth -- Charlotte Bronte
I felt physically weak and broken down, but my worse ailment was an unutterable wretchedness of mind; a wretchedness which kept drawing from me silent tears. -- Charlotte Bronte
Your station is in my heart. -- Charlotte Bronte
I thank my Maker, that in the midst of judgment he has remembered mercy. I humbly entreat my Redeemer to give me strength to lead henceforth a purer life than I have done hitherto. -- Charlotte Bronte
I had nothing to say to these words: they were not new to me: my very first recollections of existence included hints of the same kind. This reproach of my dependence had become a vague sing-song in my ear: very painful and crushing, but only half intelligible. -- Charlotte Bronte
Donnez-moi la main! I see we worship the same God, in the same spirit, though by different rites. -- Charlotte Bronte
I am, sir. It is my way - it always was my way, by instinct - ever to meet the brief with brevity, the direct with plainness. -- Charlotte Bronte
Is it better to drive a fellow-creature to despair than to transgress a mere human law, no man being injured by the breach? -- Charlotte Bronte
door, and locking it behind them. -- Charlotte Bronte
The hopes that, in my own heart sown,
And cherished by such sun and rain,
As Joy and transient Sorrow shed,
Have ripened to a harvest there: -- Charlotte Bronte
Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel: they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts, as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid and restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer -- Charlotte Bronte
Stick to the needle, learn shirt-making and gown-making and piecrust-making, and you will be a clever woman some day. -- Charlotte Bronte
The negation of severe suffering was the nearest approach to happiness I expected to know. Besides, I seemed to hold two lives - the life of thought, and that of reality. -- Charlotte Bronte
I hardly know where I found the hardihood thus to open a conversation with a stranger; the step was contrary to my nature and habits: but I think her occupation touched a chord of sympathy somewhere; -- Charlotte Bronte
What the deuce is to do now? -- Charlotte Bronte
Your fortune is yet doubtful: when I examined your face, one trait contradicted another. -- Charlotte Bronte
Who are you, Miss Snowe?" ...
"Who am I indeed? Perhaps a personage in disguise. -- Charlotte Bronte
Has there been a flood? -- Charlotte Bronte
They will both be happy, and I do not grudge them their bliss; but I groan under my own misery: some of my suffering is very acute. Truly, I ought not to have been born: they should have smothered me at first cry. -- Charlotte Bronte
Children can feel, but they cannot analyse their feelings; and if the analysis is partially effected in thought, they know not how to express the result of the process in words. -- Charlotte Bronte
Prodigious was the amount of life I lived that morning. -- Charlotte Bronte
Do as you please, sir. -- Charlotte Bronte
All is not gold that glitters -- Charlotte Bronte
I can be on guard against my enemies, but God deliver me from my friends! -- Charlotte Bronte
But I had fastened the door - I had the key in my pocket: I should have been a careless shepherd if I had left a lamb - my pet lamb - so near a wolf's den, unguarded: you were safe. -- Charlotte Bronte
I knew he would soon strike, and while dreading the blow, I mused on the disgusting and ugly appearance of him who would presently deal it. -- Charlotte Bronte
As to the thoughts, they are elfish. Those eyes in the Evening Star you must have seen in a dream. -- Charlotte Bronte
The word book acted as a transient stimulus -- Charlotte Bronte
This notice has been written, because I felt it a sacred duty to wipe the dust off their gravestones, and leave their dear names free from soil. -- Charlotte Bronte
Her grave is in Brocklebridge Churchyard: for fifteen years after her death it was only covered by a grassy mound; but now a gray marble tablet marks the spot, inscribed with her name, and the word 'Resurgam'. -- Charlotte Bronte
I wait, with some impatience in my pulse, but no doubt in my breast. -- Charlotte Bronte
Hide me from the hostile light That does not warm, but burn; That drains the blood of suffering men; Drinks tears, instead of dew; Let me sleep through his blinding reign, And only wake with you! -- Charlotte Bronte
I am not fond of the prattle of children,' he continued; 'for, old bachelor as I am, I have no pleasant associations connected with their lisp. It would be intolerable to me to pass a whole evening tete-a-tete with a brat ... -- Charlotte Bronte
He is a good and a great man; but he forgets, pitilessly, the feelings and claims of little people, in pursuing his own large views. It is better, therefore, for the insignificant to keep out of his way, lest, in his progress, he should trample them down. -- Charlotte Bronte
Now I have performed the part of a good host," pursued Mr. Rochester, "put my guests into the way of amusing each other, I ought to be at liberty to attend to my own pleasure. -- Charlotte Bronte
To the Press, for the fair field its honest suffrage has opened to an obscure aspirant. -- Charlotte Bronte
Rapidly, merrily, Life's sunny hours flit by, Gratefully, cheerily Enjoy them as they fly! -- Charlotte Bronte
Then her soul sat on her lips, and language flowed, from what source I cannot tell. -- Charlotte Bronte
His idea was still with me, because it was not a vapor sunshine could disperse, nor a sand-traced effigy storms could wash away; it was a name graven on a tablet, fated to last as long as the marble it inscribed. The craving to know what had become of him followed me everywhere. -- Charlotte Bronte
I stood lonely enough, but to that feeling of isolation I was accustomed: it did not oppress me much. -- Charlotte Bronte
I wished critics would judge me as an author, not as a woman. -- Charlotte Bronte
I am neither a man nor a woman but an author. -- Charlotte Bronte
The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself. I -- Charlotte Bronte
It was as if a band of Italian days had come from the South, like a flock of glorious passenger birds, and lighted to rest them on the cliffs of Albion. -- Charlotte Bronte
I am not your dear; I cannot lie down: send me to school soon, Mrs. Reed, for I hate to live here. -- Charlotte Bronte
You have been resident in my house three months?"
"Yes, sir."
"And you came from
?"
"From Lowood school, in -shire."
"Ah! a charitable concern. How long were you there?"
"Eight years."
"Eight years! you must be tenacious of life. -- Charlotte Bronte
Friends always forget those whom fortune forsakes. -- Charlotte Bronte
Stay your weary little wandering feet at a friend's threshold. -- Charlotte Bronte
Think meanly of me, Lina," said he. "Men, in general, are a sort of scum, very different to anything of which you have an idea; I make no pretension to be better than my fellows. -- Charlotte Bronte
My habitual mood of humiliation, self-doubt, forlorn depression, fell damp on the embers of my decaying ire. -- Charlotte Bronte
You would say you don't see it: at least I flatter myself I read as much in your eye (beware, by-the-by, what you express with that organ, I am quick at interpreting its language). -- Charlotte Bronte
Daydreams are the delusions of the devil. -- Charlotte Bronte
She is in a world of private dreams , not here with us ! -- Charlotte Bronte
I am willing to amuse you, if I can, sir - quite willing; but I cannot introduce a topic, because how do I know what will interest you? Ask me questions, and I will do my best to answer them. -- Charlotte Bronte
Within the last few months feelings had been stirred in me so much more potent than any they could raise - pains and pleasures so much more acute and exquisite had been excited than any it was in their power to inflict or bestow. -- Charlotte Bronte
Look twice before you leap. -- Charlotte Bronte
[ ... ] I could not go on for ever so: I want to enjoy my own faculties as well as to cultivate those of other people. I must enjoy them now; don't recall either my mind or body to the school; I am out of it and disposed for full holiday. -- Charlotte Bronte
The lady had the clearest voice imaginable: infinitely softer and more tuneful than could have been reasonably expected from forty years, and a form decidedly inclined to embonpoint. This -- Charlotte Bronte
You have not wept at all! I see a white cheek and a faded eye, but no trace of tears. I suppose then, your heart has been weeping blood? -- Charlotte Bronte
He stood between me and every thought of religion, as an eclipse intervenes between man and the broad sun. -- Charlotte Bronte
To cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the soul! -- Charlotte Bronte
I am not going out under human guidance, subject to the defective laws and erring control of my feeble fellow-worms; my king, my lawgiver, my captain, is the All-perfect; it seems strange to me that all round me do not burn to enlist under the same banner--to join in the same enterprise. -- Charlotte Bronte
Endurance over-goaded, stretched the hand of fraternity to sedition. -- Charlotte Bronte
But not of late years are we about to speak; we are going back to the beginning of this century; late years - present years are dusty, sun-burnt, hot, arid; we will evade the noon, forget it in siesta, pass the mid-day in slumber, and dream of dawn. -- Charlotte Bronte
What fresh hell is this? -- Charlotte Bronte
Beauty is given to dolls, majesty to haughty vixens, but mind, feeling, passion and the crowning grace of fortitude are the attributes of an angel. -- Charlotte Bronte
A child cannot quarrel with it's elders, as I had done-cannot give its furious feelings uncontrolled play, as I had given mine-without experiencing afterwards the pang of remorse and the chill of reaction. -- Charlotte Bronte
Human life and human labour were near. I must struggle on: strive to live and bend to toil like the rest. -- Charlotte Bronte
Very good looking, with black hair and eyes, and lively complexion. -- Charlotte Bronte
I had wanted to compromise with Fate: to escape occasional great agonies by submitting to a whole life of privation and small pains. -- Charlotte Bronte
While I looked, I thought myself happy, and was surprised to find myself ere long weeping
and why? -- Charlotte Bronte
Would not exchange this one little English girl for the Grand Turk's whole seraglio, gazelle-eyes, houri forms, and all! -- Charlotte Bronte
If all the world hated you and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved of you and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends. -- Charlotte Bronte
A deal of people, Miss, are for trusting all to Providence; but I say Providence will not dispense with the means, though He often blesses them when they are used discreetly. -- Charlotte Bronte
God is everywhere; but certainly we feel His presence most when His works are on the grandest scale spread before us; -- Charlotte Bronte
The said Eliza, John, and Georgiana were now clustered round their mama in the drawing-room: she lay reclined on a sofa by the fireside, and with her darlings about her (for the time neither quarrelling nor crying) looked perfectly -- Charlotte Bronte
Who are you, Lucy Snowe? -- Charlotte Bronte
Be not far from me, for trouble is near: there is none to help. -- Charlotte Bronte
Sententious sage! so it is: but I swear by my household gods not -- Charlotte Bronte
Something of vengeance I had tasted for the first time; as aromatic wine it seemed, on swallowing, warm and racy: its after-flavour, metallic and corroding, gave me a sensation as if I had been poisoned. -- Charlotte Bronte
They would neither hate nor envy us if they did not deem us so much happier than themselves. -- Charlotte Bronte
I thought of him now-in his room-watching the sunrise; hoping I should soon come to say I would stay with him and be his. I longed to be his; I panted to return; it was not too late. -- Charlotte Bronte
If people were always kind and obedient to those who are cruel and unjust, the wicked people would have it all their own way: they would never feel afraid, and so they would never alter, but would grow worse and worse. -- Charlotte Bronte
Coldest the remembrance of the wider ocean
wealth, caste, custom intervened between me and what I naturally and inevitably loved. -- Charlotte Bronte
I remembered that the real world was wide, and that a varied field of hopes and fears, of sensations and excitments, awaited those who had the courage to go forth into it's expanse, to seek real knowledge of life amidst it's perils. -- Charlotte Bronte
Misery generates hate. -- Charlotte Bronte
One does not jump, and spring, and shout hurrah! at hearing one has got a fortune, one begins to consider responsibilities, and to ponder business; on a base of steady satisfaction rise certain grave cares, and we contain ourselves, and brood over our bliss with a solemn brow. -- Charlotte Bronte
She bit me. She worried me like a tigress, when Rochester got the knife from her ... She sucked the blood: she said she'd drain my heart. Richard mason -- Charlotte Bronte
Reserved people often really need the frank discussion of their sentiments and griefs more than the expansive. -- Charlotte Bronte
The last mighty victories of the Lamb, who are called, and chosen, and faithful. -- Charlotte Bronte
I will break obstacles to happiness, to goodness - yes, goodness. I wish to be a better man than I have been, than I am -- Charlotte Bronte
All my life was awake and astir in my frame ... and he I was not to array myself to meet. -- Charlotte Bronte
If life be a war, it seemed my destiny to conduct it single-handed. -- Charlotte Bronte
Under an unsophisticated culture, inartificial tastes, and an unpretending outside, lay a secret power and fire that might have informed the brain and kindled the veins of a hero ... -- Charlotte Bronte
I am, as it is bliss to be,
Still and untroubled. -- Charlotte Bronte
Reader, do you know, as I do, what terror those cold people can put into the ice of their questions? How much of the fall of the avalanche is in their anger? of the breaking up of the frozen sea in their displeasure? -- Charlotte Bronte
If ever I did a good deed in my life - if ever I thought a good thought - if ever I prayed a sincere and blameless prayer - if ever I wished a righteous wish, - I am rewarded now. To be your wife is, for me, to be as happy as I can be on earth. -- Charlotte Bronte
My wretched feet, flayed and swollen to lameness by the sharp air of January, began to heal and subside under the gentler breathings of April; the nights and mornings no longer by their Canadian temperature froze the very blood in our veins; we could now endure the play-hour passed in the garden. -- Charlotte Bronte
To live, for me, Jane, is to stand on a crater-crust which may crack and spue fire any day. -- Charlotte Bronte
Oh! that gentleness! how far more potent is it than force! -- Charlotte Bronte
Jane, you are docile, diligent, disinterested, faithful, constant, and courageous; very gentle, and very heroic: cease to mistrust yourself - I can trust you unreservedly. -- Charlotte Bronte
The noble and high born cannot endure grief. -- Charlotte Bronte