Charlotte Bronte Quotes
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Novelists should never allow themselves to weary of the study of real life.
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A great deal; you are good to those who are good to you. It is all I ever desire to be. 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. When we are struck at without a reason, we should strike back again very hard; I am sure we should - so hard as to teach the person who struck us never to do it again.
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A new chapter in a novel is something like a new scene in a play.
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Tact, if it be genuine, never sleeps.
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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.
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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.
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I can be on guard against my enemies, but God deliver me from my friends!
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Intelligence and proper education will give you independence of spirit.
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I have for the first time found what I can truly love–I have found you. You are my sympathy–my better self–my good angel–I am bound to you with a strong attachment. I think you good, gifted, lovely: a fervent, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans to you, draws you to my centre and spring of life, wrap my existence about you–and, kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one.
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Peril, loneliness, an uncertain future, are not oppressive evils, so long as the frame is healthy and the faculties are employed; so long, especially, as Liberty lends us her wings, and Hope guides us by her star.
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I would always rather be happy than dignified.
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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.
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Everyone else is just cocktails.
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A depressing and difficult passage has prefaced every page I have turned in life.
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I think you will learn to be natural with me, as I find it impossible to be conventional with you
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You, Jane, I must have you for my own--entirely my own.
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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.
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There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.
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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.
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I ask you to pass through life at my side—to be my second self, and best earthly companion.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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There is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow creatures, and feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort.