Charlotte Brontë > Quotes

“He made me love him without looking at me”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“For me, I felt at home in this sort of discourse.  I could never rest in communication with strong, discreet, and refined minds, whether male or female, till I had passed the outworks of conventional reserve, and crossed the threshold of confidence, and won a place by their heart’s very hearthstone.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“My first quarter at Lowood seemed an age; and not the golden age either; it comprised an irksome struggle with difficulties in habituating myself to new rules and unwonted tasks.  The fear of failure in these points harassed me worse than the physical hardships of my lot; though these were no trifles.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“It is far better to endure patiently a smart which nobody feels but yourself, than to commit a hasty action whose evil consequences will extend to all connected with you; and besides, the Bible bids us return good for evil.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“If all the world hated you, and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved you, and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.'

-Helen Burns
Page#87”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Probably, if I had lately left a good home and kind parents, this would have been the hour when I should most keenly have regretted the separation; that wind would then have saddened my heart; this obscure chaos would have disturbed my peace! as it was, I derived from both a strange excitement, and reckless and feverish, I wished the wind to howl more wildly, the gloom to deepen to darkness, and the confusion to rise to clamour.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Все мы ищем в жизни идеальное. Когда-то мной владела сладкая иллюзия, будто в положенное время большинство людей находит предмет своих исканий и происходит это скорее рано, нежели поздно. Хотя мне не довелось найти его в годы моей юности, твёрдая уверенность в том, что он всё же существует, продолжала жить в моей душе в самую лучшую, светлую пору жизни, сохраняя надежду. Но я не нашла его и в зрелости и смирилась с тем, что отныне так всегда и будет. Несколько бесцветных лет я жила спокойно, ничего не ожидая от грядущего.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Emma

“Was I gleeful, settled, content, during the hours I passed in yonder bare, humble schoolroom this morning and afternoon? Not to decieve myself, I must reply -- No: I felt desolate to a degree. I felt -- yes, idiot that I am -- I felt degraded. I doubted I had taken a step which sank instead of raising me in the scale of social existence. I was weakly dismayed at the ignorance, the poverty, the coarseness of all I heard and saw around me. But let me not hate and despise myself too much for these feelings; I know them to be wrong -- that is a great step gained. I shall strive to overcome them.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I can so dearlt distinguish between the criminal and his crime; I can so sincerely forgive the first while abhor the last”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“April advanced to May. A bright, serene May it was; days of blue sky and placid sunshine, and soft western or southern gales filled up its duration.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“You are cold, because you are alone: no contact strikes the fire from you that is in you. You are sick; because the best of feelings, the highest and the sweetest given to man, keeps far away from you. You are silly, because, suffer as you may, you will not beckon it to approach, nor will you stir one step to meet it where it waits you.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“it was a pity Mr. Brocklehurst could not see them too; he would perhaps have felt that, whatever he might do with the outside of the cup and platter, the inside was further beyond his interference than he imagined.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Where the sun had gone down in simple state—pure of the pomp of clouds—spread a solemn purple, burning with the light of red jewel and furnace flame at one point, on one hill-peak, and extending high and wide, soft and still softer, over half heaven. The east had its own charm or fine deep blue, and its own modest gem, a casino and solitary star: soon it would boast the moon; but she was yet beneath the horizon.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“...хорошенькие, живые, непосредственные девочки, бесстрашные, ибо не чувствующие за собой вины...”
― Charlotte Brontë, Emma

“I have forbidden Adèle to talk to me about her presents, and she is bursting with repletion: have the goodness to serve her as auditress and interlocutrice; it will be one of the most benevolent acts you ever performed.” Adèle,”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Genius is said to be self-conscious. ”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I'm afraid your principles on some points are eccentric.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Bessie asked if I would have a book: the word book acted as a transient stimulus, and I begged her to fetch Gulliver’s Travels from the library.  This book I had again and again perused with delight. ”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Reader, I forgave him at the moment and on the spot.  There was such deep remorse in his eye, such true pity in his tone, such manly energy in his manner; and besides, there was such unchanged love in his whole look and mien—I forgave him all: yet not in words, not outwardly; only at my heart’s core.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I will tell you it is my neck you are putting in peril; for whatever is yours is, in a dearer and tenderer sense, mine.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“The dews at this hour is unwholesome for females," observed Joe.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Shirley

“thanks are due in three quarters. To the Public, for the indulgent ear it has inclined to a plain tale with”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Hayallerim çok güzel ama kesinlikle gerçekdışı olduklarını unutmamalıyım. Zihnimde umut verici bir gökyüzü ve çiçeklerle dolu yemyeşil bir cennet var lakin ayaklarımın altındaki toprağın yürüyemeyecek kadar taşlarla kaplı olduğunun ve beni kapkara fırtınaların beklediğinin kesinlikle farkındayım.”
― Charlotte Brontë

“appearance should not be mistaken for truth”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“We can burst the bonds which chain us,
Which cold human hands have wrought,
And where none shall dare restrain us
We can meet again, in thought.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell

“Ill-Success failed to crush us: the mere effort to succeed had given a wonderful zest to existence; it must be pursued.”
― Charlotte Brontë

“...but I believed in the existence of other and more vivid kinds of goodness, and what I believed in I wished to behold.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Alas! the readers of our era are less favoured. But courage! I will not pause either to accuse or repine. I know poetry is not dead, nor genius lost; nor has Mammon gained power over either, to bind or slay: they will both assert their existence, their presence, their liberty and strength again one day. Powerful angels, safe in heaven! they smile when sordid souls triumph, and feeble ones weep over their destruction. Poetry destroyed? Genius banished? No! Mediocrity, no: do not let envy prompt you to the thought. No; they not only live, but reign and redeem: and without their divine influence spread everywhere, you would be in hell--the hell of your own meanness.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Gratitude, and many associations, all pleasurable and genial, made his face the object I best liked to see; his presence in a room was more cheering than the brightest fire.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Millions of marriages are unhappy; if everybody confessed the truth, perhaps all are more or less so.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Shirley