Charlotte Brontë > Quotes

“Oh, you need not be jealous! I wanted to tease you a little to make you less sad: I thought anger would be better than grief. But if you wish me to love you, could you but see how much I do love you, you would be proud and content. All my heart is yours, sir; it belongs to you; and with you it would remain, were fate to exile the rest of me from your presence forever.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“And, moreover, you need not for a moment to insinuate that the virtues have taken refuge in cottages and wholly abandoned slated houses. Let me tell you, I particularly abominate that sort of trash, because I know so well that human nature is human nature everywhere, whether under tile or thatch, and that in every specimen of human nature that breathes, vice and virtue are ever found blended, in smaller or greater proportions, and that the proportion is not determined by station. I have seen villains who were rich, and I have seen villains who were poor, and I have seen villains who were neither rich nor poor,”
― Charlotte Brontë, The Brontës Complete Works

“Nothing moved [Emily Bronte] more than any insinuation that the faithfulness and clemency, the long-suffering and loving-kindness which are esteemed virtues in the daughters of Eve, become foibles in the sons of Adam.”
― Charlotte Brontë

“I have something in my brain and heart, in my blood and nerves, that assimilates me mentally to him.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“The sternest-seeming stoic is human after all; and to “burst” with boldness and good-will into “the silent sea” of their souls is often to confer on them the first of obligations.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Conqueror I might be of the house but the inmate would escape to heaven before I could call myself possesor of its clay dwelling-place. And it is you, spirit -- with will and energy, and virtue and purity -- that I want: not alone your brittle frame”
― 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. I”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I heard him talk with relish. It was his nature to be communicative; he liked to open to a mind unacquainted with the world glimpses of its scenes and ways (I do not mean its corrupt scenes and wicked ways, but such as derived their interest from the great scale on which they were acted, the strange novelty by which they were characterised); and I had a keen delight in receiving the new ideas he offered, in imagining the new pictures he portrayed, and following him in thought through the new regions he disclosed, never startled or troubled by one noxious allusion.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre: The Original 1847 Unabridged and Complete Edition

“Finiscila, Jane! Dai troppo peso all'amore degli esseri umani. Sei troppo impulsiva, troppo irruenta. La mano divina che ha creato il tuo corpo, e poi vi ha soffiato dentro la vita, ti ha dotato di risorse che vanno ben oltre la tua fragilità dei tuoi simili. Al di là di questa terra e al di là del genere umano, c'è un mondo invisibile e un regno di anime. Quel mondo è tutto intorno a noi, perché è ovunque, e quelle anime vegliano su di noi, perché hanno il compito di proteggerci. E se stiamo morendo nel dolore e nella vergogna, se il disprezzo ci colpisce da ogni parte e l'odio ci schiaccia, gli angeli vedono i nostri tormenti, riconoscono la nostra innocenza e Dio, per incoronarci della meritata ricompensa, aspetta solo che il nostro spirito si separi dalla carne. E allora perché dobbiamo lasciarci sempre sopraffare dall'angoscia, quando la vita finisce in un attimo e la morte non è altro che un passaggio per la felicità, per la gloria?”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“And after all, authors' heroines are almost as good as authoress's heroes.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Shirley

“Lucy, has he not rather the air of an incipient John Bull? He used to be slender as an eel, and now I fancy in him a sort of heavy dragoon bent—a beef-eater tendency. Graham, take notice! If you grow fat I disown you.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“About midnight, the storm in one half-hour fell to a dead calm. The
fire, which had been burning dead, glowed up vividly. I felt the air
change, and become keen. Raising blind and curtain, I looked out, and
saw in the stars the keen sparkle of a sharp frost.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“I had not, it seems, the originality to chalk out a new road to shame and destruction, but trode the old track with stupid exactness not to deviate an inch from the beaten center.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“You, Jane, I must have you for my own – entirely my own.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I felt very glad now, that the drug administered in the sweet draught had filled me with a possession which made bed and chamber intolerable. I always, through my whole life, liked to penetrate to the real truth; I like seeking the goddess in her temple, and handling the veil, and daring the dread glance.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“Jag kände igen den kraftfulla näsan, som talade mer om karaktär än om skönhet,”
― Charlotte Brontë

“I only remind you of your own words, sir: you said error brought remorse, and you pronounced remorse the poison of existence.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Reader, it is not pleasant to dwell on these details. Some say there is enjoyment in looking back to painful experience past; but at this day I can scarcely bear to review the times to which I allude: the moral degradation, blent with the physical suffering, form too distressing a recollection ever to be willingly dwelt on.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“The graves I close, the dead are raised; thoughts, feelings, memories that slept are seen by me ascending from the clods, haloed most of them; but while I gaze on their vapoury forms, and strive to ascertain definitely their outline , the sound which wakened the dues, and they sink, each and all, like a light wreath of mist, absorbed in the mould, recalled to urns, repealed in monuments. Farewell, luminous phantoms!”
― Charlotte Brontë, The Professor

“I believe; I have faith: I am going to God.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“The human heart has hidden treasures,
In secret kept, in silence sealed;­
The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures,
Whose charms were broken if revealed.”
― Charlotte Brontë

“I was tormented by the contrast between my idea and my handiwork: in each case I had imagined something which I was quite powerless to realise.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Perhaps this may be the case, perhaps not: the frost may get into his heart and never thaw more; when spring comes, a crow or a pie may pick out of the wall only his dormouse-bones. Well, even in that case, all will be right: it is to be supposed he knew from the first he was mortal, and must one day go the way of all flesh, “As well soon as syne.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“In this state of feeling, it is not to be expected that he would deliberate much as to whether his advance was or was not prejudicial to others. Not being a native, nor for any length of time a resident of the neighbourhood, he did not sufficiently care when the new inventions threw the old workpeople out of employ. He never asked himself where those to whom he no longer paid weekly wages found daily bread; and in this negligence he only resembled thousands besides, on whom the starving poor of Yorkshire seemed to have a closer claim.”
― Charlotte Brontë, The Brontës Complete Works

“As she grew up, a sound English education corrected in a great measure her French defects;”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“No; I know I should think well of myself; but that is not enough; if others don’t love me, I would rather die than live – I cannot bear to be solitary and hated, Helen. Look here; to gain some real affection from you, or Miss Temple, or any other whom I truly love, I would willingly submit to have the bone of my arm broken, or to let a bull toss me, or to stand behind a kicking horse, and lit it dash its hoof at my chest.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“they [women] 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

“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre”
― Charlotte Brontë

“We will evade the noon, forget it in siesta, pass the mid-day in slumber, and dream of dawn.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Shirley

“To live amidst general regard, though it be but the regard of working people, is like “sitting in sunshine, calm and sweet;” serene inward feelings bud and bloom under the ray.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre