Charlotte Brontë > Quotes

“there is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow-creatures, and feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort. I”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Something of vengeance I had tasted for the first time; as aromatic wine it seemed, on swallowing, warm and racy: its after-flavour, metallic and corroding, gave me a sensation as if I had been poisoned. Willingly would I now have gone and asked Mrs. Reed’s pardon; but I knew, partly from experience and partly from instinct, that was the way to make her repulse me with double scorn, thereby re-exciting every turbulent impulse of my nature.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“the solitary rocks and promontories”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“The promise of a smooth career, which my first calm introduction to Thornfield Hall seemed to pledge, was not belied on a longer acquaintance with the place and its inmates. ”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“. . . if there was a hope of comfort for any moment, the heart or head of no human being in this house could yield it . . .”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“Capisce ora come stanno le cose, non è vero?
Dopo una giovinezza e una maturità trascorse in parte in mezzo a inesprimibili sofferenze, e in parte nella più desolata solitudine, io ho trovato colei che posso veramente amare...io ho trovato lei.

Lei è la mia simpatia, la miglior parte di me stesso, il mio angelo custode, e io le sono unito da un legame fortissimo. La credo buona, intelligente, attraente; il mio cuore ha concepito una passione grave e fervida e mi spinge verso di lei, l'attira al centro e alla sorgente della mia esistenza, fa gravitare la mia vita attorno a lei, e ardendo d'una fiamma pura e possente, fonde lei e me in un essere solo.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts, as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags.  It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“All men of talent, whether they be men of feeling or not; whether they be zealots, or aspirants, or despots--provided only they be sincere--have their sublime moments, when they subdue and rule. I felt veneration for St. John--veneration so strong that its impetus thrust me at once to the point I had so long shunned. I was tempted to cease struggling with him--to rush down the torrent of his will into the gulf of his existence, and there lose my own. I was almost as hard beset by him now as I had been once before, in a different way, by another. I was a fool both times. To have yielded then would have been an error of principle; to have yielded now would have been an error of judgment. So I think at this hour, when I look back to the crisis through the quiet medium of time: I was unconscious of folly at the instant”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Yes, yes; and you, I suppose, had a mother from the moon or from Utopia, since not a nation in Europe has a claim on your interest?”
― Charlotte Bronte, The Professor

“I and my pupil dined”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“How all my brain was in tumult, and all my heart in insurrection! Yet in what darkness, what dense ignorance, was the mental battle fought! I could not answer the ceaseless inward question—why I thus suffered; now, at the distance of—I will not say how many years, I see it clearly.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“you were mad, do you think I should hate you?” “I do indeed, sir.” “Then you are mistaken, and you know nothing about me, and nothing about the sort of love of which I am capable.  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: if you flew at me as wildly as that woman did this morning, I should receive you in an embrace, at least as fond as it would be restrictive.  I should not shrink from you with disgust as I did from her: in your quiet moments you should have no watcher and no nurse but me; and I could hang over you with untiring tenderness, though you gave me no smile in return; and never weary of gazing into your eyes, though they had no longer a ray of recognition for”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Yet,” suggested the secret voice which talks to us in our own hearts, “you are not beautiful either, and perhaps Mr. Rochester approves you: at any rate, you have often felt as if he did; and last night—remember his words; remember his look; remember his voice!”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I knew,” he continued, “you would do me good in some way, at some time;—I saw it in your eyes when I first beheld you: their expression and smile did not”—(again he stopped)—“did not” (he proceeded hastily) “strike delight to my very inmost heart so for nothing.  People talk of natural sympathies; I have heard of good genii: there are grains of truth in the wildest fable.  My cherished preserver, goodnight!” Strange”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Mr. Brocklehurst, I believe I intimated in the letter which I wrote to you three weeks ago, that this little girl has not quite the character and disposition I could wish: should you admit her into Lowood school, I should be glad if the superintendent and teachers were requested to keep a strict eye on her, and, above all, to guard against her worst fault, a tendency to deceit.  I mention this in your hearing, Jane, that you may not attempt to impose on Mr. Brocklehurst.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“...was conscious that a moment’s mutiny had already rendered me liable to strange penalties, and, like any other rebel slave, I felt resolved, in my desperation, to go all lengths.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“beauty is in the eye of the gazer.”  My”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“In catalepsy and a dead trance, I studiously held the quick of my nature.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“Strange!’ he exclaimed, suddenly starting again from the point. ‘Strange that I should choose you for the confidante of all this, young lady; passing strange12 that you should listen to me quietly, as if it were the most usual thing in the world for a man like me to tell stories of his opera-mistresses to a quaint, inexperienced girl like you!”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Burns immediately left the class, and going into the small inner room where the books were kept, returned in half a minute, carrying in her hand a bundle of twigs tied together at one end. This ominous tool she presented to Miss Scatcherd with a respectful curtesy; then she quietly, and without being told, unloosed her pinafore, and the teacher instantly and sharply inflicted on her neck a dozen strokes with the bunch of twigs. Not a tear rose to Burns’ eye; and, while I paused from my sewing, because my fingers quivered at this spectacle with a sentiment of unavailing and impotent anger, not a feature of her pensive face altered its ordinary expression. “Hardened girl!” exclaimed Miss Scatcherd; “nothing can correct you of your slatternly habits: carry the rod away.” Burns obeyed: I looked at her narrowly as she emerged from the book-closet; she was just putting back her handkerchief into her pocket, and the trace of a tear glistened on her thin cheek.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I was then happy: happy at least in my way. I feared nothing but interruption”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jan Eyre

“But what is so headstrong as youth?  What so blind as inexperience? ”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“You see now, my queenly Blanche,” began Lady Ingram, “she encroaches. Be advised, my angel girl—and—” “Show her into the library, of course,” cut in the “angel girl.” “It is not my mission to listen to her before the vulgar herd either: I mean to have her all to myself. Is there a fire in the library?” “Yes, ma’am—but she looks such a tinkler.” “Cease that chatter, blockhead! and do my bidding.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“...tizennyolc évesen általában tetszeni akarunk, és a tudat, hogy külsőnk erre alkalmatlan, korántsem lélekemelő.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“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!  And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you.  I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh;—it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God’s feet, equal,—as we are!”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I don't wish to treat you like an inferior: that is (correcting himself), I claim only such superiority as must result from twenty years' difference in age and a century's advance in experience.”
― Charlotte Brontë

“Well; I would rather die yonder than in a street, or on a frequented road, ' I reflected. 'And far better that crows and ravens -if any ravens there be in these regions- should pick my flesh from my bones, than that they should be prisoned in a work-house coffin, and moulder in a pauper's grave.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“no, I was not heroic enough to purchase liberty at the price of caste.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“What makes you say he does not love you, Jane?"

"You should hear himself on the subject. He has again and again explained that it is not himself, but his office he wishes to mate. He has told me I am formed for labour—not for love: which is true, no doubt. But, in my opinion, if I am not formed for love, it follows that I am not formed for marriage. Would it not be strange, Di, to be chained for life to a man who regarded one but as a useful tool?"

"Insupportable—unnatural—out of the question!”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“God is a friend to the poor orphan child.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre