Charlotte Bronte Quotes
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I am not an angel," I asserted; "and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself.
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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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Friends always forget those whom fortune forsakes.
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Everyone else is just cocktails.
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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.
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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 is a perverse mood of the mind which is rather soothed than irritated by misconstruction; and in quarters where we can never be rightly known, we take pleasure, I think, in being consummately ignored. What honest man on being casually taken for a housebreaker does not feel rather tickled than vexed at the mistake?
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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 a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags.
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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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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.
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Talented people almost always know full well the excellence that is in them.
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As to the thoughts, they are elfish. Those eyes in the Evening Star you must have seen in a dream.
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There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.
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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.
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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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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!
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'I wish I had only offered you a sovereign instead of ten pounds. Give me back nine pounds, Jane; I’ve a use for it.' 'And so have I, sir,' I returned, putting my hands and my purse behind me. 'I could not spare the money on any account.' 'Little niggard!' said he, 'refusing me a pecuniary request! Give me five pounds, Jane.' 'Not five shillings, sir; nor five pence.' 'Just let me look at the cash.' 'No, sir; you are not to be trusted.'
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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.
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If he were insane, however, his was a very cool and collected insanity.
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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?
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I am not your dear; I cannot lie down: send me to school soon, Mrs. Reed, for I hate to live here.
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Conventionality is not morality.
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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.
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You are human and fallible.