Charlotte Brontë > Quotes

“His veins were dark with a vivid belladonna tincture, the essence of jealousy.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“Reader, do you know, as I do, what terror those cold people can put into the ice of their questions? How much of the fall of the avalanche is in their anger? of the breaking up of the frozen sea in their displeasure?”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“-Let respect be the foundation, affection the first floor, love the superstructure; Mdlle Reuters is a skillful architect.
- And interest?
-yes, no doubt; it will be the cement between every stone!”
― Charlotte Brontë, The Professor

“Left alone, I was passive; repulsed, I withdrew; forgotten — my lips would not utter, nor my eyes dart a reminder.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“The standard heroes and heroines of novels, are personages in whom I could never, from childhood upwards, take an interest, believe to be natural, or wish to imitate: were I obliged to copy these characters, I would simply -- not write at all. Were I obliged to copy any former novelist, even the greatest, even Scott, in anything , I would not write -- Unless I have something of my own to say, and a way of my own to say it in, I have no business to publish; unless I can look beyond the greatest Masters, and study Nature herself, I have no right to paint; unless I can have the courage to use the language of Truth in preference to the jargon of Conventionality, I ought to be silent.”
― Charlotte Brontë, The Letters of Charlotte Brontë

“And if I had loved him less I should have thought his accent and look of exultation savage; but, sitting by him, roused from the nightmare of parting- called to the paradise of union- I thought only of the bliss given to me to drink in so abundant a flow.
Again and again he said, “Are you happy, Jane?” And again and again I answered, “Yes.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Who but a coward would pass his whole life in hamlets; and for ever abandon his faculties to the eating rust of obscurity?”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“I had feelings: passive as I lived, little as I spoke, cold as I looked, when I thought of past days, I could feel. About the present, it was better to be stoical; about the future—such a future as mine—to be dead.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“Courage, Lucy Snowe! With self-denial and economy now, and steady exertion by-and-by, an object in life need not fail you. Venture not to complain that such an object is too selfish, too limited, and lacks interest; be content to labour for independence until you have proved, by winning that prize, your right to look higher.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“The spring which moved my energies lay far away beyond seas, in an Indian isle.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“No sooner did I see that his attention was riveted on them, and that I might gaze without being observed, than my eyes were drawn involuntarily to his face: I could not keep their lids under control: they would rise, and the irids would fix on him. 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.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I see on your cheek two tears which I know are hot as two sparks, and salt as two crystals of the sea.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“She has been unkind to you, no doubt; because you see, she dislikes your cast of character, as Miss Scatcherd does mine; but how minutely you remember all she has done and said to you! What a singularly deep impression her injustice seems to have made on your heart! No ill-usage so brands its record on my feelings. 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. We are, and must be, one and all, burdened with faults in this world: but the time will soon come when, I trust, we shall put them off in putting off our corruptible bodies; when debasement and sin will fall from us with this cumbrous frame of flesh, and only the spark of the spirit will remain, - the impalpable principle of light and thought, pure as when it left the Creator to inspire the creature: whence it came it will return; perhaps again to be communicated to some being higher than man - perhaps to pass through gradations of glory, from the pale human soul to brighten to the seraph! ...”
― Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

“I know my maker sanctions what I do. For the world's judgement - I wash my hands thereof. For man's opinion- I defy it”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I wish I were a girl again, half savage and hardy, and free; and laughing at injuries, not maddening under them! Why am I so changed? why does my blood rush into a hell of tumult at a few words?”
― Charlotte Bronte

“Am I a liar in your eyes?' He asked, passionately. 'Little sceptic, 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.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Happiness is the cure—a cheerful mind the preventive: cultivate both." No mockery in this world ever sounds to me so hollow as that of being told to cultivate happiness. What does such advice mean? Happiness is not a potato, to be planted in mould, and tilled with manure.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“Still I did not answer, and still I writhed myself from his grasp: for I was still incredulous.

"Do you doubt me, Jane?"

"Entirely."

"You have no faith in me?"

"Not a whit."

"Am I a liar in your eyes?" he asked passionately. "Little sceptic, 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 rumour 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.”
― Charlotte Brontë

“I wait, with some impatience in my pulse, but no doubt in my breast.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“It is weak and silly to say you cannot bear what it is your fate to be required to bear.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Jane, will you marry me?"
"Yes sir."
"A poor blind man, whom you will have to lead about by the hand?"
"Yes, sir."
"A crippled man, twenty years older older than you, whom you will have to wait on?"
"Yes, sir."
"Truly, Jane?"
"Most truly, sir.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Keep to your caste and be too self-respecting to lavish the love of the whole heart, soul and strength where such a gift is not wanted and would be despised.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Pity, Jane, from some people is a noxious and insulting sort of tribute, which one is justified in hurling back in the teeth of those who offer it; but that is the sort of pity native to callous, selfish hearts; it is a hybrid, egotistical pain at hearing of woes, crossed with ignorant contempt for those who have endured them. But that is not your pity, Jane; it is not the feeling of which your whole face is full at this moment—with which your eyes are now almost overflowing—with which your heart is heaving—with which your hand is trembling in mine. Your pity, my darling, is the suffering mother of love: its anguish is the very natal pang of the divine passion. I accept it, Jane; let the daughter have free advent—my arms wait to receive her.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Diana announced that she would just give me time to get over the honey-moon, and then she would come and see me.

'She had better not wait till then, Jane,' said Mr. Rochester, when I read her letter to him; 'if she does, she will be too late, for our honey-moon will shine our life-long: its beams will only fade over your grave or mine.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“You,” I said, “a favourite with Mr. Rochester? You gifted with the power of pleasing him? You of importance to him in any way? Go! your folly sickens me. And you have derived pleasure from occasional tokens of preference—equivocal tokens shown by a gentleman of family and a man of the world to a dependent and a novice. How dared you? Poor stupid dupe!—Could not even self-interest make you wiser? You repeated to yourself this morning the brief scene of last night?—Cover your face and be ashamed! He said something in praise of your eyes, did he? Blind puppy! Open their bleared lids and look on your own accursed senselessness! It does good to no woman to be flattered by her superior, who cannot possibly intend to marry her; and it is madness in all women to let a secret love kindle within them, which, if unreturned and unknown, must devour the life that feeds it; and, if discovered and responded to, must lead, ignis-fatus-like, into miry wilds whence there is no extrication.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I am not pretty. I am not beautiful. I am as radiant as the sun.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“The world can understand well enough the process of perishing for want of food: perhaps few persons can enter into or follow out that of going mad from solitary confinement. They see the long-buried prisoner disinterred, a maniac or an idiot!—how his senses left him—how his nerves, first inflamed, underwent nameless agony, and then sunk to palsy—is a subject too intricate for examination, too abstract for popular comprehension…And long, long may the minds to whom such themes are no mystery—by whom their beings are sympathetically seized—be few in number, and rare of reencounter. Long may it be generally thought that physical privations alone merit compassion, and that the rest is a figment.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“You would say you don't see it: at least I flatter myself I read as much in your eye (beware, by-the-by, what you express with that organ, I am quick at interpreting its language).”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“... and she held out a pretty gold ring. 'Put it,' she said, 'on the fourth finger of my left hand, and I am yours and you are mine; and we shall leave Earth and make our own Heaven yonder.' ”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Unfeeling thing that I was, the sensibilities of the maternal heart were Greek and Hebrew to me.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette