Charlotte Brontë > Quotes

“I have told you, reader, that I had learned to love Mr. Rochester; I could not unlove him now, merely because I found that he had ceased to notice me—because I might pass hours in his presence and he would never once turn his eyes in my direction—because I saw all his attentions appropriated by a great lady, who scorned to touch me with the hem of her robes as she passed; who, if ever her dark and imperious eye fell on me by chance, would withdraw it instantly as from an object too mean to merit observation. I could not unlove him, because I felt sure he would soon marry this very lady—because I read daily in her a proud security in his intentions respecting her—because I witnessed hourly in him a style of courtship which, if careless and choosing rather to be sought than to seek, was yet, in its very carelessness, captivating, and in its very pride, irresistible.

There was nothing to cool or banish love in these circumstances; though much to create despair. Much too, you will think, reader, to engender jealousy, if a woman in my position could presume to be jealous of a woman in Miss Ingram's. But I was not jealous, or very rarely;—the nature of the pain I suffered could not be explained by that word. Miss Ingram was a mark beneath jealousy: she was too inferior to excite the feeling.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I'm not speaking to you through mortal flesh. It is my spirit that addresses your spirit, as it passes through the grave and stood at God's feet equal. As we are.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“No; I know I should think well of myself; but that is not enough: if others don't love me I would rather die than live — I cannot bear to be solitary and hated, Helen. Look here; to gain some real affection from you, or Miss Temple, or any other whom I truly love, I would willingly submit to have the bone of my arm broken, or to let a bull toss me, or to stand behind a kicking horse, and let it dash its hoof at my chest — "
"Hush, Jane! you think too much of the love of human beings; you are too impulsive, too vehement; the sovereign hand that created your frame, and put life into it, has provided you with other resources than your feeble self, or than creatures feeble as you. Besides this earth, and besides the race of men, there is an invisible world and a kingdom of spirits: that world is round us, for it is everywhere; and those spirits watch us, for they are commissioned to guard us; and if we were dying in pain and shame, if scorn smote us on all sides, and hatred crushed us, angels see our tortures, recognise our innocence (if innocent we be: as I know you are of this charge which Mr. Brocklehurst has weakly and pompously repeated at second-hand from Mrs. Reed; for I read a sincere nature in your ardent eyes and on your clear front), and God waits only the separation of spirit from flesh to crown us with a full reward. Why, then, should we ever sink overwhelmed with distress, when life is so soon over, and death is so certain an entrance to happiness — to glory?”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I believe - I daily find it proved - that we can get nothing in this world worth keeping, not so much as a principle or a conviction, except out of purifying flame, or through strengthening peril. We err; we fall; we are humbled - then we walk more carefully. We greedily eat and drink poison out of the gilded cup of vice, or from the beggar's wallet of avarice; we are sickened, degraded; everything good in us rebels against us; our souls rise bitterly indignant against our bodies; there is a period of civil war; if the soul has strength, it conquers and rules thereafter.”
― Charlotte Brontë

“I hold myself supremely blest -- blest beyond what language can express; because I am my husband's life as fully as he is mine. No woman was ever nearer to her mate than I am: ever more absolutely bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“All the melody on earth is concentrated in my Jane's tongue to my ear (I am glad it is not a naturally silent one): all the sunshine I can feel is in her presence.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“There are people from whom we secretly shrink, whom we would personally avoid, though reason confesses that they are good people: there are others with faults of temper, &c., evident enough, beside whom we live content, as if the air about them did us good.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“I feel that, as—   Stone walls do not a prison make,   Nor iron bars—a cage, so 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.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“I know what it is to live entirely for and with what I love best on earth. I hold myself supremely blessed.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Eight years! you must be tenacious of life. I thought half the time in such a place would have done up any constitution! No wonder you have rather the look of another world. I marvelled where you had got that sort of face. When you came on me in Hay Lane last night, I thought unaccountably of fairy tales, and had half a mind to demand whether you had bewitched my horse: I am not sure yet.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I am disposed to be as content as a queen, and you try to stir me up to restlessness! To what end?"
To the end of turning to profit the talents which God has committed to your keeping; and of which he will surely one day demand a strict account.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I perceive all this, and believe that you were born under my star. Yes, you were born under my star! Tremble! for where that is the case with mortals, the threads of their destinies are difficult to disentangle; knottings and catchings occur — sudden breaks leave damage in the web.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“Come to me - come to me entirely now,' said he: and added, in his deepest tone, speaking in my ear as his cheek was laid on mine, 'Make my happiness - I will make yours.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“but when people are long indifferent to us, we grow indifferent to their indifference. It”
― Charlotte Brontë, Shirley

“Mr. Rochester : Your gaze is very direct, Miss Eyre. Do you think me handsome?
Jane Eyre: No, sir.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I wonder at the goodness of God, the generosity of my friends, the bounty of my lot. I do not repine.”
― Charlotte Brontë

“Which is better? - To have surrendered to temptation; listened to passion; made no painful effort - no struggled; - but to have sunk down in the silken snare; fallen asleep on the flower covering it; wakened in a southern clime, amongst the luxuries of a pleasure villa: to have been now living in France, Mr. Rochester's mistress; delirious with his love half my time - for he would - oh, yes, he would have love me well for a while.”
― Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

“Some time in the afternoon I raised my head, and looking round and seeing the western sun gilding the sign of its decline on the wall, I asked, "What am I to do?"

But the answer my mind gave--"Leave Thornfield at once"--was so prompt, so dread, that I stopped my ears. I said I could not bear such words now. "That I am not Edward Rochester's bride is the least part of my woe," I alleged: "that I have wakened out of most glorious dreams, and found them all void and vain, is a horror I could bear and master; but that I must leave him decidedly, instantly, entirely, is intolerable. I cannot do it."

But, then, a voice within me averred that I could do it and foretold that I should do it. I wrestled with my own resolution: I wanted to be weak that I might avoid the awful passage of further suffering I saw laid out for me; and Conscience, turned tyrant, held Passion by the throat, told her tauntingly, she had yet but dipped her dainty foot in the slough, and swore that with that arm of iron he would thrust her down to unsounded depths of agony.

Let me be torn away," then I cried. "Let another help me!"

No; you shall tear yourself away, none shall help you: you shall yourself pluck out your right eye; yourself cut off your right hand: your heart shall be the victim, and you the priest to transfix it.”
― Charlotte Brontë , Jane Eyre

“It had formerly been my endeavor to study all sides of his character: to take the bad with the good; and from the just weighing of both, to form an equitable judgment. Now I saw no bad. The sarcasm that had repelled, the harshness that had startled me once, were only like keen condiments in a choice dish: their presence was pungent, but their absence would be felt as comparatively insipid.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“They will both be happy, and I do not grudge them their bliss; but I groan under my own misery: some of my suffering is very acute. Truly, I ought not to have been born: they should have smothered me at first cry.”
― Charlotte Brontë

“I am only bound to invoke Memory where I know her responses will possess some degree of interest.”
― Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

“To speak truth, reader, there is no excellent beauty, no accomplished grace, no refinement, without strength as excellent, as complete, as trustworthy.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“Don’t talk to me about her, John: I told you not to go near her; she is
not worthy of notice; I do not choose that either you or your sisters
should associate with her.”
Here, leaning over the banister, I cried out suddenly, and without at all
deliberating on my words—

“They are not fit to associate with me!”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“...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...”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“He is not a ghost; yet every nerve I have is unstrung: for a moment I am beyond my own mastery. What does it mean? I did not think I should tremble in this way when I saw him, or lose my voice or the power of motion in his presence.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I need not sell my soul to buy bliss. I have an inward treasure, born with me, which can keep me alive if all extraneous delights should be withheld; or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give...Strong wind, earthquake-shock, and fire may pass by: but I shall follow the guiding of that still small voice which interprets the dictates of conscience.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I desired liberty; for liberty I gasped; for liberty I uttered a prayer; it seemed scattered on the wind then faintly blowing. I abandoned it and framed a humbler supplication. For change, stimulus. That petition, too, seemed swept off into vague space. "Then," I cried, half desperate, "grant me at least a new servitude!”
― Charlotte Brontë

“So much has religion done for me; turning the original materials to the best account; pruning and training nature. But she could not eradicate nature: nor will it be eradicated 'till this mortal shall put on immortality.”
― Charlotte Bronte (Jane Eyre)

“The case is very plain before me. In leaving England, I should leave a loved but empty land — Mr. Rochester is not there; and if he were, what is, what can that ever be to me? My business is to live without him now: nothing so absurd, so weak as to drag on from day to day, as if I were waiting some impossible change in circumstances, which might reunite me to him. Of course (as St. John once said) I must seek another interest in life to replace the one lost: is not the occupation he now offers me truly the most glorious man can adopt or God assign? Is it not, by its noble cares and sublime results, the one best calculated to fill the void left by uptorn affections and demolished hopes? I believe I must say, Yes — and yet I shudder.”
― Charlotte Brontë

“El corazón humano tiene tesoros ocultos,
Mantenidos en secreto, sellados en silencio;
Los pensamientos, las esperanzas, los sueños, los placeres,
que si se revelaran, sus encantos se romperían.”
― Charlotte Brontë