Charlotte Brontë > Quotes

“Observe her when she has some knitting, or some other woman's work in hand, and sits the image of peace, calmly intent on her needles and her silk, some discussion meantime going on around her, in the course of which peculiarities of character are being developed, or important interests canvassed; she takes no part in int; her humble, feminine mind is wholl with her knitting; none of her features move; she neither presumes to smile approval, nor frown disapprobation; her little hands assiduously ply their unpretending task; if she can only get this purse finished, or this bonnet-grec completed, it is enough for her.”
― Charlotte Brontë, The Professor

“I was at once content and stimulated with what I saw: I liked what I had seen, and wished to see more. Yet, for a long time, I treated you distantly, and sought your company rarely. I was an intellectual epicure, and wished to prolong the gratification of making this novel and piquant acquaintance: besides, I was for a while troubled with a haunting fear that if I handled the flower freely its bloom would fade-the sweet charm of freshness would leave it. I did not then know that it was no transitory blossom; but rather the radiant resemblance of one, cut in an indestructible gem.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I know my Leader; that He is just as well as mighty; and while He has chosen a feeble instrument to perform a great task, He will, from the boundless stores of His providence, supply the inadequacy of the means to the end.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“It is my way — it always was my way, by instinct — ever to meet the brief with brevity, the direct with plainness.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I recalled that inward sensation I had experienced: for I could recall it, with all its unspeakable strangeness. I recalled the voice I had heard; again I questioned whence it came, as vainly as before: it seemed in ME--not in the external world. I asked was it a mere nervous impression--a delusion? I could not conceive or believe: it was more like an inspiration. The wondrous shock of feeling had come like the earthquake which shook the foundations of Paul and Silas's prison; it had opened the doors of the soul's cell and loosed its bands--it had wakened it out of its sleep, whence it sprang trembling, listening, aghast; then vibrated thrice a cry on my startled ear, and in my quaking heart and through my spirit, which neither feared nor shook, but exulted as if in joy over the success of one effort it had been privileged to make, independent of the cumbrous body.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I might have been different, I might have been as good as you - wiser - almost stainless. I envy your peace of mind, your clean conscience, your unpolluted memory.”
― Charlotte Brontë

“with the book on my knee , i was happy ,i feared nothing except interruption.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“If you think, from this prelude, that anything like a romance is preparing for you, reader, you never were more mistaken. Do you anticipate sentiment, and poetry, and reverie? Do you expect passion, and stimulus, and melodrama? Calm you expectations; reduce them to a lowly standard. Something real, cool, and solid lies before you; something unromantic as Monday morning, when all who have work wake with the consciousness that they must rise and betake themselves thereto. It is not positively affirmed that you shall not have a taste of the exciting, perhaps toward the middle and close of the meal, but it is resolved that the first dish set upon the table shall be one that a Catholic - ay, even an Anglo-Catholic - might eat on Good Friday in Passion Week: it shall be cold lentils and vinegar without oil; it shall be unleavened bread with bitter herbs, and no roast lamb.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Shirley: A Tale

“... in short, as a man, he would have wished to coerce me into obedience;”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Blanche Ingram, after having repelled, by supercilious taciturnity, some efforts of Mrs Dent and Mrs Eshton to draw her into conversation, had first murmured over some sentimental tunes and airs on the piano, and then, having fetched a novel from the library, had flung herself in haughty listlessness on a sofa and prepared to beguile, by the spell of fiction, the tedious hours of absence.”
― Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

“Where there is energy to command well enough, obedience never fails.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Sir, your wife is living; that is a fact acknowledged this morning by yourself. If I lived with you as you desire, I should then be your mistress; to say otherwise is sophistical -- is false.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“You never felt jealousy, did you, Miss Eyre? Of course not: I need not ask you; because you never felt love.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I don't think, sir, you have a 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.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“[...] I could not go on for ever so: I want to enjoy my own faculties as well as to cultivate those of other people. I must enjoy them now; don't recall either my mind or body to the school; I am out of it and disposed for full holiday.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Adèle is not answerable for either her mother's faults or yours; I have a regard for her, and now that I know she is, in a sense, parentless – forsaken by her mother and disowned by you, sir – I shall cling closer to her than before. How could I possibly prefer the spoiled pet of a wealthy family, who hate her governess as a nuisance, to a lonely little orphan, who leans towards her as a friend?”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Never," said he, as he ground his teeth, "never was anything at once so frail and so indomitable. A mere reed she feels in my hand!" (And he shook me with the force of his hold.) "I could bend her with my finger and thumb: and what good would it do if I bent, if I uptore, if I crushed her? Consider that eye: consider the resolute, wild, free thing looking out of it, defying me, with more than courage —with a stern triumph. Whatever I do with its cage, I cannot get at it—the savage, beautiful creature! If I tear, if I rend the slight prison, my outrage will only let the captive loose.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“No; for in my heart you have not the outline of a place: I only occasionally turn you over in my brain.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“My state of mind, and all accompanying circumstances, were just now such as most to favour the adoption of a new, resolute, and daring— perhaps desperate— line of action. I had nothing to lose.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“Hopeless of the future, I wished but this- that my Maker had that night thought good to require my soul of me while I slept; and that this weary frame, absolved by death from further conflict with fate, had now but to decay quietly, and mingle in peace with the soil of this wilderness.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilised by education: they grow there, firm as weeds among stones. ”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“But I apprised you that I was a hard man," said he, "difficult to persuade."

"And I am a hard woman—impossible to put off."

"And then," he pursued, "I am cold: no fervour infects me."

"Whereas I am hot, and fire dissolves ice. The blaze there has thawed all the snow from your cloak; by the same token, it has streamed on to my floor, and made it like a trampled street. As you hope ever to be forgiven, Mr. Rivers, the high crime and misdemeanour of spoiling a sanded kitchen, tell me what I wish to know."

"Well, then," he said, "I yield; if not to your earnestness, to your perseverance: as stone is worn by continual dropping.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“You glowed in the cool moonlight last night, when you mutinied against fate, and claimed your rank as my equal.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“The world, I soon learned, held a different estimate: and I make no doubt, the world is very right in its view, yet believe also that I am not quite wrong in mine.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my
own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear. Your
mind is my treasure, and if it were broken, it would be my
treasure still: if you raved, my arms should confine you,
and not a strait waistcoat—your grasp, even in fury, would
have a charm for me.”
― Charlotte Brontë

“The same hostile roof now again rose before me; my prospects were doubtful yet; and I had yet an aching heart: I still felt as a wanderer on the face of the earth; but I experienced firmer trust in myself and my own powers, and less withering dread of oppression. The gaping wound of my wrongs too, was now quite healed; and the flame of resentment extinguished." (Bronte, p.264)

"A sneer, however, whether covert or open, had now no longer that power over me it once possessed; as I sat between my cousins, I was surprised to find how easy I felt under the total neglect of the one and the semi-sarcastic attentions of the other--Eliza did not mortify, nor Georgiana ruffle me. The fact was, I had other things to think about within the last few months feelings had been stirred in me so much more potent than any they could raise--pains and pleasures so much more acute and exquisite had been excited, than any it was in their power to inflict or bestow--that their airs gave me no concern either for good or bad.”
― Charlotte Bronte

“It little mattered whether my curiosity irritated him: I knew the pleasure of vexing and soothing him by turns; it was one I chiefly delighted in, and a sure instinct always prevented me from going too far: beyond the verge or provocation I never ventured; on the extreme brink I liked well to try my skill. Retaining every minute form of respect, every propriety of my station, I could still meet him in argument without fear of uneasy restraint: this suited both him and me.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“They outnumbered me, and I was worsted and under their feet; but, as yet, I was not dead.”
― Charlotte Brontë

“...such a vehement impatience of restraint and steady work; such a strong wish for wings—wings such as wealth can furnish; such an urgent thirst to see, to know, to learn; something internal seemed to expand bodily for a minute.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Selected Letters

“Do you think I am an automaton? — a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! — I have as much soul as you — and full as much heart!”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre