Charlotte Brontë > Quotes

“Miliony skazane są na cichszy los od mego i miliony w milczeniu buntują się przeciwko swemu losowi. (…) Kobiety uważa się na ogół za bardzo spokojne istoty, ale kobiety czują tak samo jak mężczyźni; potrzebują ćwiczeń dla swych zdolności, pola dla swych wysiłków nie mniej niż ich bracia; cierpią, gdy są zbyt skrępowane, cierpią w bezwzględnym zastoju zupełnie tak samo, jak cierpieliby mężczyźni; i ciasnotą umysłu grzeszą ich bardziej uprzywilejowani bracia, którzy twierdzą, że kobiety powinny się ograniczyć do gotowania puddingów, robienia pończoch, grania na fortepianie i haftowania. Bezmyślnością jest potępiać je albo śmiać się z nich, jeżeli starają się robić więcej albo nauczyć więcej, niż zwyczaj wymaga dla ich płci.”

-Jane Eyre "Jane Eyre”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“If even this stranger had smiled and been good-humoured to me when I addressed him; if he had put off my offer of assistance gaily and with thanks, I should have gone on my way and not felt any vocation to renew inquiries: but the frown, the roughness of the traveller, set me at my ease”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“grovelling, mole-eyed blockhead”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“And what was she like?” “Tall, fine bust, sloping shoulders; long, graceful neck: olive complexion, dark and clear; noble features; eyes rather like Mr. Rochester’s: large and black, and as brilliant as her jewels.  And then she had such a fine head of hair; raven-black and so becomingly arranged: a crown of thick plaits behind, and in front the longest, the glossiest curls I ever saw.  She was dressed in pure white; an amber-coloured scarf was passed over her shoulder and across her breast, tied at the side, and descending in long, fringed ends below her knee.  She wore an amber-coloured flower, too, in her hair: it contrasted well with the jetty mass of her curls.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“To be together is for us to be at once as free as in solitude, as gay as in company. We talk, I believe, all they long: to talk to each other is but a more animated and an audible thinking.”
― Charlote Bronte

“Know, that in the course of your future life you will often find yourself elected the involuntary confidant of your acquaintances’ secrets: people will instinctively find out, as I have done, that it is not your forte to tell of yourself, but to listen while others talk of themselves; they will feel, too, that you listen with no malevolent scorn of their indiscretion, but with a kind of innate sympathy; not the less comforting and encouraging because it is very unobtrusive in its manifestations.” “How”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I thought not. And so you were waiting for your people when you sat on that stile?” “For whom, sir?”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“am unhappy,—very unhappy, for other things.” “What other things?  Can you tell me some of them?” How much I wished to reply fully to this question!  How difficult it was to frame any answer!  Children can feel, but they cannot analyse their feelings; and if the analysis is partially effected in thought, they know not how to express the result of the process in words.  Fearful, however, of losing this first and only opportunity of relieving my grief by imparting it, I, after a disturbed pause, contrived to frame a meagre, though, as far as it went, true response.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“She had finished her breakfast, so I permitted her to give a specimen of her accomplishments.  Descending from her chair, she came and placed herself on my knee; then, folding her little hands demurely before her, shaking back her curls and lifting her eyes to the ceiling, she commenced singing a song from some opera.  It was the strain of a forsaken lady, who, after bewailing the perfidy of her lover, calls pride to her aid; desires her attendant to deck her in her brightest jewels and richest robes, and resolves to meet the false one that night at a ball, and prove to him, by the gaiety of her demeanour, how little his desertion has affected her.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

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

“....Angels see our tortures, recognize our innocence (if innocent we be: as I know you are of this charge...) 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 turn to another class [...] in whose eyes whatever is unusual is wrong: whose ears detect in each protest against bigotry--that parent of crime--an insult to piety, that regent of God on earth. I would suggest to such doubters certain obvious distinctions; I would remind them of certain simple truths.

Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last.”
― Charlotte Brontë, The Brontë Sisters: The Complete Novels

“My eyes were covered and closed: eddying darkness seemed to swim around me, and reflection came in as black and confused a flow. Self-abandoned, relaxed, and effortless, I seemed to have laid me down in the dried up bed of a great river: I heard a flood loosened in remote mountains, and felt the torrent come: to rise I had no will, to flee I had no strength. I lay faint longing to be dead. One idea only still throbbed life like within me- a remembrance of God: it be got an unuttered prayer: these words went wandering up and down in my rayless mind, as something that should be whispered, but no energy found to express them”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I have talked, face to face, with what I reverence, with what I delight in,—with an original, a vigorous, an expanded mind.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I am, as it is bliss to be,
Still and untroubled.”
― Charlotte Brontë, The Brontës

“When I saw my charmer thus come in accompanied by a cavalier, I seemed to hear a hiss, and the green snake of jealousy, rising on undulating coils from the moonlit balcony, glided within my waistcoat, and ate it's way in two minutes to my heart's core.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“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 Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Much better," I said calmly. "Much better, I thank you, Dr. John." For, reader, this tall young man - this darling son - this host of mine - this Graham Bretton, was Dr. John: he, and no other; and, what is more, I ascertained this identity scarcely with surprise. What is more, when I heard Graham's step on the stairs, I knew what manner of figure would enter, and for whose aspect to prepare my eyes. The discovery was not of to-day, its dawn had penetrated my perceptions long since. Of course I remembered young Bretton well; and though ten years (from sixteen to twenty-six) may greatly change the boy as they mature him to the man, yet they could bring no such utter difference as would suffice wholly to blind my eyes, or baffle my memory. Dr. John Graham Bretton retained still an affinity to the youth of sixteen.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“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! 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

“She often had a careless way of lingering behind time.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Shirley

“I know what it is to live entirely for and with what I love best on earth.  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.  I know no weariness of my Edward’s society: he knows none of mine, any more than we each do of the pulsation of the”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Ova čista mala kapljica od bistrog malog izvora bila je premila, prodirala je duboko sve do srca.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“Helen Burns’s shoulder, my arms round her neck.  I was asleep, and Helen was—dead.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I heard the gallop of a horse at a distance on the road; I was sure it was you; and you were departing for many years and for a distant country. ”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“confidence”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I was for a while troubles with a haunting fear that if I handles the flower freely it's 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

“As to the thoughts, they are elfish.  These eyes in the Evening Star you must have seen in a dream.  How could you make them look so clear, and yet not at all brilliant? for the planet above quells their rays.  And what meaning is that in their solemn depth?  And who taught you to paint wind?  There is a high gale in that sky, and on this hill-top.  Where did you see Latmos?  For that is Latmos. ”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow”
― Charlotte Brontë, The Professor

“[...] 'Bitter and base associations have become the sole food of your memory; you wander here and there, seeking rest in exile; happiness in pleasure - I mean in heartless, sensual pleasure - such as dulls intellect and blights feeling. Heart-weary and soul-withered, you come home after years of voluntary banishment; you make a new acquaintance - how, or where, no matter; you find in this stranger much of the good and bright qualities which you have sought for twenty years, and never before encountered; and they are all fresh, healthy, without soil and without taint. Such society revives, regenerates; you feel better days come back - higher wishes, purer feelings; you desire to recommence your life, and to spend what remains to you of days in a way more worthy of an immortal being. To attain this end, are you justified in over leaping an obstacle of custom - a mere convention impediment, which neither your conscience sanctifies not your judgment approves?”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Life, however, was yet in my possession with its requirements and pains and responsibilities. The burden must be carried, the want provided for, the suffering endured, responsibilities fulfilled.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre