Charlotte Brontë > Quotes

“Her book has perhaps been a good one; it has refreshed, refilled, rewarmed her heart; it has set her brain astir, furnished her mind with pictures.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Shirley

“Is your book interesting?' I had already formed the intention of asking her to lend it to me some day.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“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

“They were not bound to regard with affection a thing that could not sympathize with one among them; a heterogeneous thing, opposed to them in temperament, in capacity, in propensities; a useless thing, incapable of serving their interest, or adding to their pleasure; a noxious thing, cherishing the germs of indignation at their treatment, of contempt of their judgment.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Women read men more truly than men read women. I’ll prove that in a magazine paper some day when I have time; only it will never be inserted. It will be ‘declined with thanks,’ and left for me at the publisher’s.”
― Charlotte Brontë

“I suppose animals kept in cages, and so scantily fed as to be always upon the verge of famine, await their food as I awaited a letter. Oh! — to speak the truth, and drop that tone of a false calm which long to sustain, outwears nature's endurance — I underwent in those seven weeks bitter fears and pains, strange inward trials, miserable defections of hope, intolerable encroachments of despair. This last came so near me sometimes that her breath went right through me. I used to feel it like a baleful air or sigh, penetrate deep, and make motion pause at my heart, or proceed only under unspeakable oppression. The letter — the well-beloved letter — would not come; and it was all of sweetness in life I had to look for.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“I am willing to amuse you, if I can, sir—quite willing; but I cannot introduce a topic, because how do I know what will interest you? Ask me questions, and I will do my best to answer them.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“They were not bound to regard with affection a thing that could not sympathise with one amongst them; a heterogeneous thing, opposed to them in temperament, in capacity, in propensities; a useless thing, incapable of serving their interest, or adding to their pleasure; a noxious thing, cherishing the germs of indignation at their treatment, of contempt of their judgment.  I know that had I been a sanguine, brilliant, careless, exacting, handsome, romping child—though equally dependent and friendless—Mrs. Reed would have endured my presence more complacently; her children would have entertained...”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“The said Eliza, John, and Georgiana were now clustered round their mama in the drawing-room: she lay reclined on a sofa by the fireside, and with her darlings about her (for the time neither quarrelling nor crying) looked perfectly”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I was for a while troubled with the haunting fear that if I handled the flower freely its bloom would fade—the sweet charm of freshness would leave it. I did not know then that it was no transitory blossom, but rather the radiant resemblance of one, cut in an indestructible gem.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“It can never be, sir; it does not sound likely. Human beings never enjoy complete happiness in this world. I was not born for a different destiny to the rest of my species: To imagine such a lot befalling me is a fairy tale - a day-dream.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“„О, няма да умра, нали? Той няма да ни раздели. Бяхме толкова щастливи”.”
― Charlotte Brontë

“Justly thought, rightly said.”
― Charlotte Brontë

“that I have wakened out of most glorious dreams, and found them all void and vain, is a horror I could bear and master”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre - The Original Classic Edition

“St. John had a book in his hand - it was his unsocial custom to read at meals - he closed it and looked up.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“my fear had by now passed its limit, and other feelings took its place.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“The second picture contained for foreground only the dim peak of a hill, with grass and some leaves slanting as if by a breeze. Beyond and above spread an expanse of sky, dark blue as at twilight: rising into the sky was a woman’s shape to the bust, portrayed in tints as dusk and soft as I could combine. The dim forehead was crowned with a star; the lineaments below were seen as through the suffusion of vapour; the eyes shone dark and wild; the hair streamed shadowy, like a beamless cloud torn by storm or by electric travail. On the neck lay a pale reflection like moonlight; the same faint lustre touched the train of thin clouds from which rose and bowed this vision of the Evening Star.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Oh, you are indeed there, my skylark!  Come to me.  You are not gone: not vanished?  I heard one of your kind an hour ago, singing high over the wood: but its song had no music for me, any more than the rising sun had rays.  All the melody on earth is concentrated in my Jane’s tongue to my ear (I am glad it is not naturally a silent one): all the sunshine I can feel is in her presence.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Where the Northern Ocean, in vast whirls,
Boils round the naked, melancholy isles
Of farthest Thule; and the Atlantic surge
Pours in among the stormy Hebrides.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I am, sir.”  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 am not deceitful: if I were, I should say I loved you; but I declare, I do not love you:”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be.  If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? ”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“An odour of camphor and burnt vinegar warned me when I came near the fever room: and i passed its door quickly, fearful lest the nurse who sat up all night should here me. I dreaded being discovered and sent back; for I must see Helen,- I must embrace her before she died,- I must give her one last kiss, exchange with her one last word.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Así es siempre el camino de la vida. Tan pronto como se ha encontrado un lugar donde descansar, una voz extraña e imperativa le ordena a uno levantarse y marchar, porque la hora del descanso ha concluido”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“It is a long way off, sir.”

“No matter—a girl of your sense will not object to the voyage or the distance.”

“Not the voyage, but the distance: and then the sea is a barrier—”

“From what, Jane?”

“From England and from Thornfield: and—”

“Well?”

“From you, sir.”
― Charlotte Brontë

“To live, for me, Jane, is to stand on a crater-crust which may crack and spew fire any day.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“that will be your married look, I, as a Christian, will soon give up the notion of consorting with a mere sprite or salamander.  But what had you to ask, thing,—out with it?” “There, you are less than civil now; and I like rudeness a great deal better than flattery.  I had rather be a thing than an angel.  This is what I have to ask,—Why did you take such pains to make me believe you wished to marry Miss Ingram?” “Is that all?  Thank God it is no worse!”  And now he unknit his black brows; looked down, smiling at me, and stroked my hair, as if well pleased at seeing a danger averted.  “I think I may confess,” he continued, “even although I should make you a little indignant, Jane—and I have seen what a fire-spirit you can be when you are indignant.  You glowed in the cool moonlight last night, when you mutinied against fate, and claimed your rank as my equal.  Janet, by-the-bye, it was you who made me the offer.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I think, scathed as you look, and charred and scorched, there must be a little sense of life in you yet, rising out of that adhesion at the faithful, honest roots: you will never have green leaves more - never more see birds making nests and singing idylls in your boughs; the time of pleasure and love is over with you; but you are not desolate: each of you has a comrade to sympathize with him in his decay.


We know that God is everywhere but certainly we feel His presence most when His works are on the grandest scale spread before us; and it is in the unclouded night-sky, where His worlds wheel their silent course, that we read clearest His infinitude, His omnipotence, His omnipresence.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“By dying young, I shall escape great sufferings. I had not qualities or talents to make my way very well in the world: I should have been continually at fault.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I was a precocious actress in her eyes; she sincerely looked on me as a compound of virulent passions, mean spirit, and dangerous duplicity.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre