Charlotte Brontë > Quotes

“And you ought not to think yourself on an equality with the Misses Reed and Master Reed, because Missis kindly allows you to be brought up with them. They will have a great deal of money, and you will have none: it is your place to be humble, and to try to make yourself agreeable to them.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre: The Original 1847 Unabridged and Complete Edition

“[…] but the longer I considered the position, education, &c., of the parties, the less I felt justified in judging and blaming either him or Miss Ingram for acting in conformity to ideas and principles instilled into them, doubtless, from their childhood. All their class held these principles: I supposed, then, they had reasons for holding them, such as I could not fathom. It seemed to me that, were I a gentleman like him, I would take to my bosom only such a wife as I could love; but the very obviousness of the advantages to the husband’s own happiness offered by this plan convinced me that there must be arguments against its general adoption of which I was quite ignorant: otherwise I felt sure all the world would act as I wished to act.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Is there not love in my heart, and constancy in my resolves? It will expiate at God's tribunal. I know my Maker sanctions what I do. For the world's judgement—I wash my hands thereof. For man's opinion—I defy it.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I will tell anybody who asks me questions, this exact tale. People think you a good woman, but you are bad, hard-hearted. You are deceitful!”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“If I let a gust of wind or a sprinkling of rain turn me aside from the easy tasks, what preparation would such sloth be for the future I propose myself?”
― Charlotte Brontë

“How seem in the eyes of that God who made all firmaments, from whose nostrils issued whatever of life is here, or in the stars, shining yonder - how seem the differences of man? But as Time is not for God, nor Space, so neither is Measure, nor Comparison. We abase ourselves in our littleness, and we do right; yet it may be that the constancy of one heart, the truth and faith of one mind according to the light He has appointed, import as much to Him as the just motion of satellites about their planets, of planets about their suns, of suns around that mighty unseen centre incomprehensible, irrealizable, with strange mental effort only divined.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“Hold her arms, Miss Abbot: she’s like a mad cat.” “For shame! for shame!” cried the lady’s-maid. “What shocking conduct, Miss Eyre, to strike a young gentleman, your benefactress’s son! Your young master.” “Master! How is he my master? Am I a servant?” “No; you are less than a servant, for you do nothing for your keep. There, sit down, and think over your wickedness.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre: The Original 1847 Unabridged and Complete Edition

“Lo resistirías si no tuvieras otro remedio, si fuera tu obligación hacerlo. Es débil y estúpido decir que no puedes soportar lo que está escrito en tu destino.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Los pájaros muertos de frío no comprenden las ráfagas que los hacen temblar; la misma incapacidad tiene el alma sufriente para reconocer, en el momento de su mayor aflicción, el alba que la ha de liberar.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Shirley

“No man — no woman — is always strong, always able to bear up against the unjust opinion, the vilifying word. Calumny, even from the mouth of a fool, will sometimes cut into unguarded feelings. Shirley looked like a child that had been naughty and punished, but was now forgiven and at rest.”
― Charlotte Brontë, The Brontës Complete Works

“Veltīgi apgalvo, ka cilvēks ir apmierināts ar mierīgu dzīvi; cilvēkam vajadzīga darbība dzīve, un viņš pats sev tādu rod, ja to nedāvā liktenis.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“You have nothing to do with the master of Thornfield, further than to receive the salary he gives you for teaching his protégée, and to be grateful for such respectful and kind treatment as, if you do your duty, you have a right to expect at his hands. Be sure that is the only tie he seriously acknowledges between you and him; so don’t make him the object of your fine feelings, your raptures, agonies, and so forth. He is not of your order: keep to your caste, and 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: The Original 1847 Unabridged and Complete Edition

“I don’t know the gentlemen here. I have scarcely interchanged a syllable with one of them; and as to thinking well of them, I consider some respectable, and stately, and middle-aged, and others young, dashing, handsome, and lively: but certainly they are all at liberty to be the recipients of whose smiles they please, without my feeling disposed to consider the transaction of any moment to me.” “You don’t know”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre: The Original 1847 Unabridged and Complete Edition

“I’m very far from jesting, Miss Catherine,’ I replied. ‘You love Mr. Edgar because he is handsome, and young, and cheerful, and rich, and loves you. The last, however, goes for nothing: you would love him without that, probably; and with it you wouldn’t, unless he possessed the four former attractions.”
― Charlotte Brontë, The Brontës: Complete Novels of Charlotte, Emily & Anne Brontë - All 8 Books in One Edition: Jane Eyre, Shirley, Villette, Wuthering Heights and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall…

“forging a fresh chain to fetter your heart?”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Discoveries made by stealth seem to me dishonourable discoveries.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“...there were two gentleman seated by it talking in French;impossible to follow their rapid utterance, or comprehend much of the purport of what they said ...yet French, in the mouths of Frenchmen or Belgians (...), was as music to my ears. One of these gentlemen presently discerned me to be an Englishman - no doubt from the fashion in which I addressed the waiter; for I would persist in speaking French in my execrable South-of-England style, though the man understood English. The gentleman, after looking towards me once or twice ,politely accosted me in very good English; I remember I wish to God that I could speak French as well; his fluency and correct pronunciation impressed me for the first time with a due notion of the cosmopolitan character of the capital I was in, it was my first experience of that skill in living languages I afterwards found to be so general in Brussels.”
― Charlotte Brontë, The Professor

“Yes,’ he replied, ‘absolutely sans mademoiselle; for I am to take mademoiselle to the moon, and there I shall seek a cave in one of the white valleys among the volcano-tops, and mademoiselle shall live with me there, and only me.’

‘She will have nothing to eat: you will starve her,’ observed Adele.

‘I shall gather manna for her morning and night: the plains and hillsides in the moon are bleached with manna, Adele.’

‘She will want to warm herself: what will she do for a fire?’

‘Fire rises out of the lunar mountains: when she is cold, I’ll carry her up to a peak, and lay her down on the edge of a crater.’

‘Oh, qu’ elle y sera mal—peu comfortable! And her clothes, they will wear out: how can she get new ones?’

Mr. Rochester professed to be puzzled. ‘Hem!’ said he. ‘What would you do, Adele? Cudgel your brains for an expedient. How would a white or a pink cloud answer for a gown, do you think? And one could cut a pretty enough scarf out of a rainbow.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Se supone que las mujeres aspiran a la calma, pero lo cierto es que mujeres y hombres comparten los mismos sentimientos. Ellas, al igual que sus hermanos, también necesitan ejercitar sus facultades y un campo donde poder concentrar sus esfuerzos. Las rígidas represiones y el estancamiento absoluto les causan el mismo sufrimiento que provocaría en los hombres, y resulta patético que esos compañeros más privilegiados las confinen en el hogar, a hornear pasteles o zurcir medias, a tocar el piano o bordar bolsas. Es injusto criticarlas o reírse de sus empeños por llegar más allá, por aprender cosas que la costumbre les ha negado, tachándolas de innecesarias para las de su sexo.”
― 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.”
― 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.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“There is no folly so besotted that the idiotic rivalries of society, the prurience, the rashness, the blindness of youth, will not hurry a man to its commission”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Je peux lui confier la part immortelle de mon être sans la moindre appréhension.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“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.”
― Charlotte Brontë

“It was not her heart so much as her temper that was wrong.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Shirley

“There was nothing to cool or banish love in these circumstances, though much to create despair. 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”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“How is Papa's Polly?''
''How is Polly's Papa?”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“Algunas de las mejores personas que han existido en el mundo han estado tan desposeídas como yo estoy ahora. Si usted es cristiana, no debería considerar la pobreza como un crimen.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I wonder why moralists call this a dreary wilderness: for me it blossomed like a rose.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“It is far better to endure patiently a smart which nobody feels but yourself, than to commit a nasty action whose evil consequences will extend to all connected with you”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jan Eyre