Charlotte Brontë > Quotes

“I have not much pride under such circumstances; I would always rather be happy than dignified.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Love me, then, or hate me, as you will," I said at last, "you have my full and free forgiveness: ask now for God's, and be at peace.” - Jane Eyre”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Who, that was ever truly called, believed himself worthy of the summons?”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“To speak truth, I had not the least wish to go into company, for in company I was very rarely noticed;”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“My disposition is not so bad as you think: I am passionate, but not vindictive. Many a time, as a little child, I should have been glad to love you if you would have let me; and I long earnestly to be reconciled to you now: kiss me, aunt.” I approached my cheek to her lips: she would not touch it. She said I oppressed her by leaning over the bed, and again demanded water. As I laid her down—for I raised her and supported her on my arm while she drank—I covered her ice-cold and clammy hand with mine: the feeble fingers shrank from my touch—the glazing eyes shunned my gaze. “Love me, then, or hate me, as you will,” I said at last, “you have my full and free forgiveness: ask now for God’s, and be at peace.” Poor, suffering woman! it was too late for her to make now the effort to change her habitual frame of mind: living, she had ever hated me—dying, she must hate me still.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre: The Original 1847 Unabridged and Complete Edition

“I had learnt to love Mr. Rochester: I could not unlove him now, merely because I found that he had ceased to notice”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“St. John’s eyes, though clear enough in a literal sense, in a figurative one were difficult to fathom.  He seemed to use them rather as instruments to search other people’s thoughts, than as agents to reveal his own: the which combination of keenness and reserve was considerably more calculated to embarrass than to encourage.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Much too, you will think, reader, to engender jealousy: if a woman, in my position, could presume to be jealous of a woman in Miss Ingram’s.  But I was not jealous: or very rarely;—the nature of the pain I suffered could not be explained by that word.  Miss Ingram was a mark beneath jealousy: she was too inferior to excite the feeling. ”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“One of those small but sharp recollections that return, lacerating your self-respect like tiny penknives, and forcing from your lips, as you sit alone, sudden, insane-sounding interjections.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Shirley

“Tehän ette ole koskaan tuntenut mustasukkaisuutta, eikö totta, neiti Eyre? Tietenkään ette. Tarpeetonta kysyä, sillä ettehän ole koskaan ollut rakastunut Teillä on nuo molemmat tunteet vielä edessäpäin, sielunne nukkuu, puuttuu vielä sysäys, joka herättää sen. Te kuvittelette koko elämän olevan samanlaista tasaista virtaa kuin se, jota pitkin nuoruutenne on tähän saakka liukunut. Lipuessanne eteenpäin silmät ummessa ja kädet korvilla ette näe kallioita, jotka kohoavat vähän matkan päässä virran keskiuomassa ettekä kuule tyrskyjen pauhinaa niitten juurella Mutta minä sanon teille - pankaa sanani mieleenne - jonain päivänä tulette karikkoiseen kapeaan uomaan, jossa koko elämän virta pirstoutuu kuohuiksi ja kohinaksi, vaahdoksi ja pauhuksi. Silloin joko pirstoudutte kivikossa atomeiksi, tai jokin iso laine nostaa teidät harjalleen ja kantaa tyynemmille vesille - joillaisilla minä nyt olen.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“El señor Malone y el señor Donne son casi demasiado orgullosos para hacer algo por sí mismos; nosotros somos demasiado orgullosos para dejar que nadie haga algo por nosotros.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Shirley

“I mounted to my chamber; locked myself in; fell on my knees; and prayed in my way—a different way to St. John’s, but effective in its own fashion.  I seemed to penetrate very near a Mighty Spirit; and my soul rushed out in gratitude at His feet. ”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I would do anything for you. Anything that is right.”
― Charlotte Brontë

“I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you—especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame.  And if that boisterous Channel, and two hundred miles or so of land come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt; and then I’ve a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly.  As for you,—you’d forget me.” “That I never should, sir: you know—”  Impossible to proceed.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Am I hideous, Jane?’
‘Very, sir: you always were, you know.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Mr. Rochester had again summoned the ladies round him, and was selecting certain of their number to be of his party. “Miss Ingram is mine, of course,” said he: afterwards he named the two Misses Eshton, and Mrs. Dent. He looked at me: I happened to be near him, as I had been fastening”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Cuando le venga una tentación, señorita, tema el remordimiento, que es el veneno de la vida”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I appeared before him now, he had no such honeyed terms as “love” and “darling” on his lips: the best words at my service were “provoking puppet,” “malicious elf,” “sprite,” “changeling,” &c.  For caresses, too, I now got grimaces; for a pressure of the hand, a pinch on the arm; for a kiss on the cheek, a severe tweak of the ear.  It was all right: at present I decidedly preferred these fierce favours to anything more tender. ”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I sometimes regretted to be handsomer; I sometimes wished to have rosy cheeks, a straight nose, and a small cherry mouth; I desired to be tall, stately, and finely developed in figure...And why had I these aspirations and these regrets? It would be difficult to say”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself. I”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I walked about the chamber most of the time.  I imagined myself only to be regretting my loss, and thinking how to repair it; but when my reflections were concluded, and I looked up and found that the afternoon was gone, and evening far advanced, another discovery dawned on me, namely, that in the interval I had undergone a transforming process; that my mind had put off all it had borrowed of Miss Temple—or rather that she had taken with her the serene atmosphere I had been breathing in her vicinity—and that now I was left in my natural element, and beginning to feel the stirring of old emotions.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Yet it would be your duty to bear it, if you could not avoid it: it is weak and silly to say you cannot bear what it is your fate to be required to bear.” I”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“As yet I had spoken to no one, nor did anybody seem to take notice of me; I stood lonely enough: but to that feeling of isolation I was accustomed;”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“He must love such a handsome, noble, witty, accomplished lady; and probably she loves him, or, if not his person, at least his purse”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“God is everywhere; but certainly we feel His presence most when His works are on the grandest scale spread before us;”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Rohkeat sanani eivät näyttäneet suututtavan tai järkyttävän häntä. Huomasin senkin, että arastelematon suorapuheisuus asiassa, joka oli hänen mielestään ollut sellainen, ettei siitä saanut puhua, olikin hänelle arvaamattoman mieluisaa ja vapauttavaa. Umpimieliset ihmiset toivovat usein paljon enemmän kuin avomieliset sitä, että heidän ajatuksistaan ja murheistaan keskusteltaisiin avoimesti. Ankarinkin stoalainen on lopultakin vain ihminen ja usein kiitollinen, jos joku rohkeasti ja hyvää tarkoittaen sukeltaa hänen "sielunsa hiljaiseen mereen".”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“No fear of death will darken St. John's last hour: his mind will be unclouded, his heart will be undaunted, his hope will be sure, his faith steadfast.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“The next day commenced as before, getting up and dressing by rushlight; but this morning we were obliged to dispense with the ceremony of washing; the water in the pitchers was frozen.  A change had taken place in the weather the preceding evening, and a keen north-east wind, whistling through the crevices of our bedroom windows all night long, had made us shiver in our beds, and turned the contents of the ewers to ice.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Pedepsiti-i trupul pentru a-i salva sufletul.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs.  We are, and must be, one and all, burdened with faults in this world: but the time will soon come when, I trust, we shall put them off in putting off our corruptible bodies; when debasement and sin will fall from us with this cumbrous frame of flesh, and only the spark of the spirit will remain,—the impalpable principle of light and thought, pure as when it left the Creator to inspire the creature: whence it came it will return; perhaps again to be communicated to some being higher than man—perhaps to pass through gradations of glory, from the pale human soul to brighten to the seraph!  Surely it will never, on the contrary, be suffered to degenerate from man to fiend?  No; I cannot believe that: I hold another creed: which no one ever taught me, and which I seldom mention; but in which I delight, and to which I cling: for it extends hope to all: it makes Eternity a rest—a mighty home, not a terror and an abyss.  Besides, with this creed, I can so clearly distinguish between the criminal and his crime; I can so sincerely forgive the first while I abhor the last: with this creed revenge never worries my heart, degradation never too deeply disgusts me, injustice never crushes me too low: I live in calm, looking to the end.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre