Charlotte Bronte Quotes
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Your station is in my heart, and on the necks of those who would insult you.
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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.
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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.
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I could not help it: the restlessness was in my nature; it agitated me to pain sometimes.
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Such is the imperfect nature of man! such spots are there on the disc of the clearest planet; and eyes like Miss Scatcherd's can only see those minute defects, and are blind to the full brightness of the orb.
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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.
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Am I a liar in your eyes?" he asked passionately. "Little skeptic, you shall be convinced. What love have I for Miss Ingram? None: and that you know. What love has she for me? None: as I have taken pains to prove; I caused a rumor to reach her that my fortune was not a third of what was supposed, and after that I presented myself to see the result; it was coldness both from her and her mother. I would not-I could not-marry Miss Ingram. 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.
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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.
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My hopes were all dead --- struck with a subtle doom, such as, in one night, fell on all the first-born in the land of Egypt. I looked on my cherished wishes, yesterday so blooming and glowing; they lay stark, chill, livid corpses that could never revive.
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I like rudeness a great deal better than flattery.
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I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh: 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!
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Better to be without logic than without feeling.
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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.
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I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will.
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Because when she failed, I saw how she might have succeeded. Arrows that continually glanced off from Mr. Rochester's breast and fell harmless at his feet, might, I knew, if shot by a surer hand, have quivered keen in his proud heart - have called love into his stern eye, and softness into his sardonic face, or better still, without weapons a silent conquest might have been won.
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'My bride is here,' Rochester said , again drawing me to him, 'because my equal is here, and my likeness. Jane, will you marry me?'
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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.
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Flirting is a woman’s trade, one must keep in practice.
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There is only one difference between a madman and me. I am not mad.
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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.
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When his first-born was put into his arms, he could see that the boy had inherited his own eyes, as they once were - large, brilliant, and black.
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Conventionality is not morality.
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I can so clearly distinguish between the criminal and his crime; I can so sincerely forgive the first while I abhor the last.
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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.