Charlotte Bronte Quotes
-
Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last.
-
The eagerness of a listener quickens the tongue of a narrator.
-
What delusion has come over me? What sweet madness has seized me?
-
For those who are not hungry, it is easy to palaver about the degradation of charity.
-
Human beings must love something, and, in the dearth of worthier objects of affection, I contrived to find a pleasure in loving and cherishing a faded graven image, shabby as a miniature scarecrow. It puzzles me now to remember with what absurd sincerity I doated on this little toy, half fancying it alive and capable of sensation. I could not sleep unless it was folded in my night-gown; and when it lay there safe and warm, I was comparatively happy, believing it to be happy likewise.
-
I am not your dear; I cannot lie down: send me to school soon, Mrs. Reed, for I hate to live here.
-
And with that answer, he left me. I would much rather he had knocked me down.
-
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.
-
If life be a war, it seemed my destiny to conduct it single-handed.
-
You are human and fallible.
-
Amid the worry of a self- condemnatory soliloquy, his demeanour seemed grave, perhaps cold, both to me and his mother. And yet there was no bad feeling, no malice, no rancour, no littleness in his countenance, beautiful with a man's best beauty, even in its depression. When I placed his chair at the table, which I hastened to do, anticipating the servant, and when I handed him his tea, which I did with trembling care, he said: "Thank you, Lucy," in as kindly a tone of his full pleasant voice as ever my ear welcomed.
-
I believe that creature is a changeling: she is a perfect cabinet of oddities.
-
I soon forgot storm in music.
-
Sometimes I have the strangest feeling about you. Especially when you are near me as you are now. It feels as though I had a string tied here under my left rib where my heart is, tightly knotted to you in a similar fashion. And when you go to Ireland, with all that distance between us, I am afraid that this cord will be snapped, and I shall bleed inwardly.
-
I knew, you would do me good, in some way, at some time;- I saw it in your eyes when I first beheld you: their expression and smile did not- (again he stopped)- did not (he proceeded hastily) strike delight to my very inmost heart so for nothing.
-
All my heart is yours, sir: it belongs to you; and with you it would remain, were fate to exile the rest of me from your presence forever.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.
-
I loved him very much - more than I could trust myself to say - more than words had power to express."
-
There's no use in weeping, Though we are condemned to part: There's such a thing as keeping, A remembrance in one's heart.
-
One does not jump, and spring, and shout hurrah! at hearing one has got a fortune, one begins to consider responsibilities, and to ponder business; on a base of steady satisfaction rise certain grave cares, and we contain ourselves, and brood over our bliss with a solemn brow.
-
Life is still life, whatever its pangs; our eyes and ears and their use remain with us, though the prospect of what pleases be wholly withdrawn, and the sound of what consoles must be silenced.