Charlotte Bronte Quotes

If you are cast in a different mould to the majority, it is no merit of yours: Nature did it.

If we would build on a sure foundation in friendship we must love friends for their sake rather than for our own.

Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education; they grow firm there, firm as weeds among stones.

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.

I smiled: I thought to myself Mr. Rochester is peculiar — he seems to forget that he pays me £30 per annum for receiving his orders. "The smile is very well," said he, catching instantly the passing expression; "but speak too." "I was thinking, sir, that very few masters would trouble themselves to inquire whether or not their paid subordinates were piqued and hurt by their orders.

There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.

A reader kindly pointed out to me recently that most of the quotes I include are by men. And it's true. Personally, I don't even consider whether the author is male or female, nor even care much who the author is - what's significant is the message. Of course, women are equally capable of great insights, however in our culture it's not so long ago that women could not even be published

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.

Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity, or registering wrongs.

Jane! will you hear reason?' (he stooped and approached his lips to my ear) 'because, if you won't, I'll try violence.

I like this day; I like that sky of steel; I like the sternness and stillness of the world under this frost.

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.

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.

In sunshine, in prosperity, the flowers are very well; but how many wet days are there in life—November seasons of disaster, when a man's hearth and home would be cold indeed, without the clear, cheering gleam of intellect.

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.

flattery would be worse than vain; there is no consolation in flattery.

To the dear eye and eloquent tongue, to the soul made of fire, and the character that bends but does not break... I am ever tender and true.

God surely did not create us, and cause us to live, with the sole end of wishing always to die. I believe, in my heart, we were intended to prize life and enjoy it, so long as we retain it. Existence never was originally meant to be that useless, blank, pale, slow-trailing thing it often becomes to many, and is becoming to me, among the rest.

Whatever my powers--feminine or the contrary--God had given them, and I felt resolute to be ashamed of no faculty of his bestowal.

Tact, if it be genuine, never sleeps.

If you don't love another living soul, then you'll never be disappointed.

As to the mouth, it delights at times in laughter; it is disposed to impart all that the brain conceives; though I daresay it would be silent on much the heart experiences. Mobile and flexible, it was never intended to be compressed in the eternal silence of solitude: it is a mouth which should speak much and smile often, and have human affection for its interlocutor.

It is a pity that doing one's best does not always answer.

I mentally shake hands with you for your answer, despite its inaccuracy." Mr. Rochester

Oh, I am not going to die, am I? He will not separate us, we have been so happy.

You need not think that because we chanced to be born of the same parents, I shall suffer you to fasten me down by even the feeblest claim: I can tell you this - if the whole human race, ourselves excepted, were swept away, and we two stood alone on the earth, I would leave you in the old world, and betake myself to new.

The human and fallible should not arrogate a power with which the divine and perfect alone can be safely intrusted.

Better to be without logic than without feeling.

... 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.'

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.

For I too liked reading, thought of a frivolous and childish kind; I could not digest or comprehend the serious or substantial.

Rochester: "I am no better than the old lightning-struck chestnut-tree in Thornfield orchard…And what right would that ruin have to bid a budding woodbine cover its decay with freshness?" Jane: "You are no ruin sir - no lighting-struck tree: you are green and vigorous. Plants will grow about your roots, whether you ask them or not, because they take delight in your bountiful shadow; and as they grow they will lean towards you, and wind round you, because your strength offers them so safe a prop.

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.

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.

Let your performance do the thinking.

I wished critics would judge me as an author, not as a woman.

True enthusiasm is a fine feeling whose flash I admire where-ever I see it.

What necessity is there to dwell on the Past, when the Present is so much surer-the Future so much brighter?

There is, in lovers, a certain infatuation of egotism; they will have a witness of their happiness, cost that witness what it may.

It is not violence that best overcomes hate -- nor vengeance that most certainly heals injury.

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.

I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will.

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.

Conventionality is not morality.

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.

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.

But what is so headstrong as youth? What so blind as inexperience?

To prolong doubt was to prolong hope.