Charlotte Brontë > Quotes

“Há silêncios de várias espécies com diversos significados; nenhuma palavra poderia inspirar maior contentamento que a presença silenciosa de Monsieur Paul.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“I must, then, repeat continually that we are forever sundered – and yet, while I breathe and think, I must love him.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“But you can't get her there; there is no road to the moon: it is all air; and neither you nor she can fly.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“He had brought her to this house, “and,” continued the priest, while genuine tears rose to his eyes, “here, too, he shelters me, his old tutor, and Agnes, a superannuated servant of his father’s family. To our sustenance, and to other charities, I know he devotes three-parts of his income, keeping only the fourth to provide himself with bread and the most modest accommodations. By this arrangement he has rendered it impossible to himself ever to marry: he has given himself to God and to his angel-bride as much as if he were a priest, like me.” The father had wiped away his tears before he uttered these last words, and in pronouncing them, he for one instant raised his eyes to mine. I caught this glance, despite its veiled character; the momentary gleam shot a meaning which struck me. These Romanists are strange beings. Such a one among them—whom you know no more than the last Inca of Peru, or the first Emperor of China—knows you and all your concerns; and has his reasons for saying to you so and so, when you simply thought the communication sprang impromptu from the instant’s impulse: his plan in bringing it about that you shall come on such a day, to such a place, under such and such circumstances, when the whole arrangement seems to your crude apprehension the ordinance of chance, or the sequel of exigency. Madame Beck’s suddenly-recollected message and present, my artless embassy to the Place of the Magi, the old priest accidentally descending the steps and crossing the square, his interposition on my behalf with the bonne who would have sent me away, his reappearance on the staircase, my introduction to this room, the portrait, the narrative so affably volunteered—all these little incidents, taken as they fell out, seemed each independent of its successor; a handful of loose beads: but threaded through by that quick-shot and crafty glance of a Jesuit-eye, they dropped pendent in a long string, like that rosary on the prie-dieu. Where lay the link of junction, where the little clasp of this monastic necklace? I saw or felt union, but could not yet find the spot, or detect the means of connection.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“Good-night, Dr John; you are good, you are beautiful; but you are not mine.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“conventionality is not morality... self-righteousness is not religion”
― Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

“I skirted fields, and hedges, and lanes till after sunrise. I believe it was a lovely summer morning: I know my shoes, which I had put on when I left the house, were soon wet with dew. But I looked neither to rising sun, nor smiling sky, nor wakening nature. He who is taken out to pass through a fair scene to the scaffold, thinks not of the flowers that smile on his road, but of the block and axe-edge; of the disseverment of bone and vein; of the grave gaping at the end: and I thought of drear flight and homeless wandering --- and oh! with agony I thought of what I left.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“God surely did not create us, and cause us to live, with the sole end of wishing always to die. I”
― Charlotte Brontë, Shirley

“È umiliante il non saper dominare i propri pensieri, l'essere schiava di un rimpianto, un ricordo, schiava di un'idea imperante e fissa che tiranneggia lo spirito.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Ma la vita è una battaglia: Lettere di libertà e determinazione

“That forest-dell, where Lowood lay, was the cradle of fog and fog-bred pestilence; which, quickening with the quickening spring, crept into the Orphan Asylum, breathed typhus through its crowded schoolroom and dormitory, and, ere May arrived, transformed the seminary into an hospital. Semi-starvation and neglected colds had predisposed most of the pupils to receive infection: forty-five out of the eighty girls lay ill at one time. Classes were broken up, rules relaxed. The few who continued well were allowed almost unlimited license; because the medical attendant insisted on the necessity of frequent exercise to keep them in health: and had it been otherwise, no one had leisure to watch or restrain them.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre: The Original 1847 Unabridged and Complete Edition

“As I exclaimed ‘Jane! Jane! Jane!’ a voice—I cannot tell whence the voice came, but I know whose voice it was—replied, ‘I am coming: wait for me;’ and a moment after, went whispering on the wind the words—‘Where are you?”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Diana announced that she would just give me time to get over the honey-moon, and then she would come and see me.

“She had better not wait till then, Jane,” said Mr. Rochester, when I read her letter to him; “if she does, she will be too late, for our honey-moon will shine our life-long: its beams will only fade over your grave or mine.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“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.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“You did right to hold fast to each other,” I said: as if the monster-splinters were living things, and could hear me. “I think, scathed as you look, and charred and scorched, there must be a little sense of life in you yet; rising out of that adhesion at the faithful, honest roots: you will never have green leaves more—never more see birds making nests and singing idyls in your boughs; the time of pleasure and love is over with you; but you are not desolate: each of you has a comrade to sympathize with him in his decay.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Not a tie holds me to human society at this moment—not a charm or hope calls me where my fellow-creatures are—none that saw me would have a kind thought or a good wish for me.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Uma forma humana animada de sopro demoníaco — um espírito necrófago, um gênio do mal, um Afrita.”
― Charlotte Brontë

“And, reader, do you think I feared him in his blind ferocity? - if you do, you little know me.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“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”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre: The Original 1847 Unabridged and Complete Edition

“Dr. John,” I began, “Love is blind;” but just then a blue subtle ray sped sideways from Dr. John’s eye: it reminded me of old days, it reminded me of his picture: it half led me to think that part, at least, of his professed persuasion of Miss Fanshawe’s naïveté was assumed; it led me dubiously to conjecture that perhaps, in spite of his passion for her beauty, his appreciation of her foibles might possibly be less mistaken, more clear-sighted, than from his general language was presumable. After all it might be only a chance look, or at best the token of a merely momentary impression. Chance or intentional real or imaginary, it closed the conversation.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“For when I say that I am of his kind, I do not mean that I have his force to influence, and his spell to attract; I mean only that I have certain tastes and feelings in common with him. I must, then, repeat continually that we are for ever sundered:—and yet, while I breathe and think, I must love him.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre: The Original 1847 Unabridged and Complete Edition

“He saw nature – he saw books through me; and never did I weary of gazing for his behalf, and of putting into words the effect of the field, tree, town, river, cloud, sunbeam – of the landscape before us; of the weather round us and impressing by sound on his ear what light could no longer stamp on his eye.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Mr. Rochester, if ever I did a good deed in my life – if ever I thought a good thought – if ever I prayed a sincere and blameless prayer – if ever I wished a righteous wish, I am rewarded now. To be your wife is, for me, to be as happy as I can be on earth.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“when we are struck at without a reason, we should strike back again very hard . . . so as to teach the person who struck us never to do it again”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“If you wish me to speak more plainly, show me your palm.” “And I must cross it with silver, I suppose?” “To be sure.” I gave her a shilling: she put it into an old stocking-foot which she took out of her pocket, and having tied it round and returned it, she told me to hold out my hand. I did. She approached her face to the palm, and pored over it without touching it. “It is too fine,” said she. “I can make nothing of such a hand as that; almost without lines: besides, what is in a palm? Destiny is not written there.” “I believe you,” said I. “No,” she continued, “it is in the face: on the forehead, about the eyes, in the lines of the mouth. Kneel, and lift up your head.” “Ah! now you are coming to reality,” I said, as I obeyed her. “I shall begin to put some faith in you presently.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre: The Original 1847 Unabridged and Complete Edition

“Who can tell what a dark, dreary, hopeless life I have dragged on for months past? Doing nothing, expecting nothing; merging night in day; feeling but the sensation of cold when I let the fire go out, of hunger when I forgot to eat: and then a ceaseless sorrow,”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I am glad you are no relation of mine: I will never call you aunt again as long as I live. I will never come to see you when I am grown up; and if any one asks me how I liked you, and how you treated me, I will say the very thought of you makes me sick, and that you treated me with miserable cruelty.” “How dare you affirm that, Jane Eyre?” “How dare I, Mrs. Reed? How dare I? Because it is the truth. You think I have no feelings, and that I can do without one bit of love or kindness; but I cannot live so: and you have no pity.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Then learn from me, not to judge by appearances:”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“To me he seems now all sacred, his locks are inaccessible, and, Lucy, I feel a sort of fear, when I look at his firm, marble chin, at his straight Greek features. Women are called beautiful, Lucy; he is not like a woman, therefore I suppose he is not beautiful, but what is he, then? Do other people see him with my eyes? Do you admire him?” “I’ll tell you what I do, Paulina,” was once my answer to her many questions. “I never see him. I looked at him twice or thrice about a year ago, before he recognised me, and then I shut my eyes; and if he were to cross their balls twelve times between each day’s sunset and sunrise, except from memory, I should hardly know what shape had gone by.” “Lucy, what do you mean?” said she, under her breath. “I mean that I value vision, and dread being struck stone blind.” It was best to answer her strongly at once, and to silence for ever the tender, passionate confidences which left her lips sweet honey, and sometimes dropped in my ear—molten lead. To me, she commented no more on her lover’s beauty.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“—and yet, while I breathe and think, I must love him.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I often wonder, Shirley, whether most men resemble my uncle in their domestic relations, whether it is necessary to be unfamiliar to them in order to seem agreeable or estimable in their eyes; and whether it is impossible to their natures to retain a constant interest and affection for those they see every day.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Shirley