Charlotte Bronte Quotes
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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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What necessity is there to dwell on the Past, when the Present is so much surer-the Future so much brighter?
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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 could not help it: the restlessness was in my nature; it agitated me to pain sometimes.
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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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Consistency, madam, is the first of Christian duties.
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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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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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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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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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I like rudeness a great deal better than flattery.
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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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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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Alas! never had I loved him so well!
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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.
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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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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.
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Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity, or registering wrongs. With this creed, revenge never worries my heart, degradation never too deeply disgusts me, injustice never crushes me too low. I live in calm, looking to the end.
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Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear.
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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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I only want an easy mind, sir; not crushed by crowded obligations.
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There is only one difference between a madman and me. I am not mad.
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Rapidly, merrily, Life's sunny hours flit by, Gratefully, cheerily Enjoy them as they fly!