Shirley (Modern Library)

by Charlotte Brontë

“You come to the point, Lina; you too, then, wish to make money?” “I do: I should like an occupation; and if I were a boy, it would not be so difficult to find one. I see such an easy, pleasant way of learning a business, and making my way in life.”

So much for Caroline Helstone’s appearance; as to her character or intellect, if she had any, they must speak for themselves in due time.

Nothing refines like affection.

Family jarring vulgarises—family union elevates.

Love, when he comes wandering like a lost angel to our door, is at once admitted, welcomed, embraced: his quiver is not seen; if his arrows penetrate, their wound is like a thrill of new life:

in short, at eighteen, the school of Experience is to be entered, and her humbling, crushing, grinding, but yet purifying and invigorating lessons are yet to be learnt.

A lover masculine so disappointed can speak and urge explanation; a lover feminine can say nothing; if she did, the result would be shame and anguish, inward remorse for self-treachery.

Take the matter as you find it; ask no questions; utter no remonstrances: it is your best wisdom. You expected bread, and you have got a stone; break your teeth on it, and don’t shriek because the nerves are martyrised: do not doubt that your mental stomach—if you have such a thing—is strong as an ostrich’s: the stone will digest.

“Can labour alone make a human being happy?” “No; but it can give varieties of pain, and prevent us from breaking our hearts with a single tyrant master-torture. Besides, successful labour has its recompense; a vacant, weary, lonely, hopeless life has none.” “But hard labour and learned professions, they say, make women masculine, coarse, unwomanly.”