Charlotte Brontë > Quotes

“I see at intervals the glance of a curious sort of bird through the close-set bars of a cage: a vivid, restless, resolute captive is there; were it but free, it would soar cloud-high.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I have for the first time found what I can truly love—I have found you. You are my sympathy— my better self—my good angel. I am bound to you with a strong attachment. I think you good, gifted, lovely: a fervent, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans to you, draws you to my centre and spring of life, wraps my existence about you, and, kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“...when I asked him if he forgave me, he answered that he was not in the habit of cherishing the remembrance of vexation; that he had nothing to forgive; not having been offended.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“No era buena, no era original:”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I kept up well till I had partaken of some refreshment, warmed myself by a fire, and was fairly shut into my own room; but, as I sat down by the bed and rested my head and arms on the pillow, a terrible oppression overcame me. All at once my position rose on me like a ghost. Anomalous, desolate, almost blank of hope it stood. What was I doing here alone in great London? What should I do on the morrow? What prospects had I in life? What friends had I on, earth? Whence
did I come? Whither should I go? What should I do?

I wet the pillow, my arms, and my hair with rushing tears. A dark interval of bitter thought followed this burst; but I did not regret the step taken, nor wish to retract it. A strong, vague persuasion that it was better to go forward than backward, and that I could go forward - that a way, however narrow and difficult, would in time open - predominated over other feelings.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“She looks as if she were thinking of something beyond her punishment—beyond her situation: of something not round her nor before her.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Against legitimacy is arrayed usurpation; against modest,
single-minded, righteous, and brave resistance to encroachment
is arrayed boastful, double-tongued, selfish, and treacherous
ambition to possess. God defend the right!"

"God often defends the powerful.”
― Charlotte Brontë

“I grew by degrees cold as a stone, and then my courage sank. My habitual mood of humiliation, self-doubt, forlorn depression, fell damp on the embers of my decaying ire.”
― Charlotte Brontë

“We were born to strive and endure—you as well as I: do so. You will forget me before I forget you.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Doubtless at high noon, in the broad, vulgar middle of the day, when Madame Beck’s large school turned out rampant, and externes and pensionnaires were spread abroad, vying with the denizens of the boys’ college close at hand, in the brazen exercise of their lungs and limbs—doubtless then the garden was a trite, trodden-down place enough.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“The rain beat strongly against the pains, the wind blew tempestuously: "One lies there", I thought, "who will soon be beyond the war of earthly elements. Whither will that spirit-now struggling to quit its material tenement-flit when at length released?”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“He intended me to go with him to India.” “Ah! here I reach the root of the matter. He wanted you to marry him?” “He asked me to marry him.” “That is a fiction—an impudent invention to vex me.” “I beg your pardon, it is the literal truth: he asked me more than once, and was as stiff about urging his point as ever you could be.” “Miss Eyre, I repeat it, you can leave me. How often am I to say the same thing? Why do you remain pertinaciously perched on my knee, when I have given you notice to quit?” “Because I am comfortable there.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre: The Original 1847 Unabridged and Complete Edition

“Kağıda dökülmeden önce, hayalimde canlandırdığım halleri çarpıcıydı ama elim hayal gücüm kadar becerikli değildi; ortaya çıkan şey, her seferinde kafamın içindeki görüntünün soluk bir tasviri olmuştu sadece.”
― Charlotte Brontë

“- No tienes por qué coger nuestros libros; dependes de nosotros, dice mamá; no tienes dinero, pues tu padre no te dejó nada, y deberías estar pidiendo limosna, no viviendo aquí con nosotros, hijos de un caballero, comiendo lo que comemos nosotros y llevando ropa comprada por nuestra querida madre. Yo te enseñaré a saquear mi biblioteca, porque es mía: toda la casa es mía, o lo será dentro de unos cuantos años. Ve y ponte al lado de la puerta, apartada del espejo y de las ventanas - John Reed”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I would not exchange this one little English girl for the Grand Turk’s whole seraglio, gazelle-eyes, houri forms, and all!” The Eastern allusion bit me again. “I’ll not stand you an inch in the stead of a seraglio,” I said; “so don’t consider me an equivalent for one. If you have a fancy for anything in that line, away with you, sir, to the bazaars of Stamboul without delay, and lay out in extensive slave-purchases some of that spare cash you seem at a loss to spend satisfactorily here.” “And what will you do, Janet, while I am bargaining for so many tons of flesh and such an assortment of black eyes?” “I’ll be preparing myself to go out as a missionary to preach liberty to them that are enslaved—your harem inmates amongst the rest. I’ll get admitted there, and I’ll stir up mutiny; and you, three-tailed bashaw as you are, sir, shall in a trice find yourself fettered amongst our hands: nor will I, for one, consent to cut your bonds till you have signed a charter, the most liberal that despot ever yet conferred.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“The reader is requested to note a seeming contradiction in the two views which have been given of Graham Bretton—the public and private—the out-door and the in-door view. In the first, the public, he is shown oblivious of self; as modest in the display of his energies, as earnest in their exercise. In the second, the fireside picture, there is expressed consciousness of what he has and what he is; pleasure in homage, some recklessness in exciting, some vanity in receiving the same. Both portraits are correct.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“I thank my Maker, that, in the midst of judgment, he has remembered mercy. I humbly entreat my Redeemer to give me strength to lead henceforth a purer life than I have done hitherto!”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“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

“Câteodată semeni cu o pasăre ciudată închisă în colivie: acolo între gratii se află un prizonier plin de viață, neastâmpărat și hotărât; de-ar fi slobod, s-ar înălța până la nori.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Shirley flashed him back full payment for his spying gaze. She curled her lip and tossed her tresses. The glance she gave was at once explanatory and defiant. It said: 'I like Mr. Moore's society, and I dare you to
find fault with my taste.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Shirley

“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

“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.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“It was not without a certain wild pleasure I ran before the wind, delivering my trouble of mind to the measureless air-torrent thundering through space”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“An’ so it is, Miss Grey, ‘a soft answer turneth away wrath; but grievous words stir up anger.’ It isn’t only in them you speak to, but in yourself.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë: Masterpieces: Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Agnes Grey,The Professor... (Bauer Classics)

“How will she bear the shocks and repulses, the humiliations and desolations, which books, and my own reason, tell me are prepared for all flesh?”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“He will never love me; but he shall approve me; I will show him energies he has not yet seen, resources he has never suspected.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Solo es necesario que un hombre con talento sea sincero a la vez para que tenga momentos sublimes; puede tratarse de un fanático, de un idealista o de un tirano, pero en esos momentos es capaz de dominar y controlarte.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“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.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“So don't make him the object of your fine feelings, your raptures, agonies, and so forth... be too self-respecting to lavish the love of the whole heart, soul, and strength, where such a gift is not wanted and would be despised.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“You—you strange, you almost unearthly thing!—I love as my own flesh. You—poor and obscure, and small and plain as you are—I entreat to accept me as a husband.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre