Shirley

by Charlotte Brontë

Cheerfulness, it would appear, is a matter which depends fully as much on the state of things within as on the state of things without and around us.

It seems to me, reader, that you cannot always cut out men to fit their profession, and that you ought not to curse them because their profession sometimes hangs on them ungracefully.

he would often express the most ferocious and tyrannical wishes regarding those who had acted, as he thought, ferociously and tyrannically.

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.

on the subject of 'café au lait,' which Sarah said was the queerest mess she ever saw, and a waste of God's good gifts, as it was 'the nature of coffee to be boiled in water,'

Once on the theme of her own merits, mademoiselle was fluent.

Are we sufficiently interested in anybody to take a pleasure in pulling their character to pieces?'

'But you have been married. Why were you so inconsistent as to marry?' 'Every man is mad once or twice in his life.'

Love can excuse anything except Meanness; but Meanness kills Love, cripples even Natural Affection; without Esteem True Love cannot exist.

The roof of the chapel did not fly off, which speaks volumes in praise of its solid slating.

Apropos the singing within...

Mark will have no youth; while he looks juvenile and blooming, he will be already middle-aged in mind. His body is now fourteen years of age, but his soul is already thirty.

It becomes all children, especially girls, to be silent in the presence of their elders.'

Ha!

What was I created for, I wonder? Where is my place in the world?'

Men and women never struggle so hard as when they struggle alone,

'It can scarcely he expected that the eager and young should hold the opinions of the cool and middle-aged.'

Now, when I feel my company superfluous, I can comfortably fold my independence round me like a mantle, and drop my pride like a veil, and withdraw to solitude.

I don't think we should trust to what they call passion at all, Caroline. I believe it is a mere fire of dry sticks, blazing up and vanishing:

the higher above me, so much the better: it degrades to stoop - it is glorious to look up.

Them that reckons to be friends to a lower class than their own fro' political motives is never to be trusted: they always try to make their inferiors tools.

all arraying of ranks against ranks, all party hatreds, all tyrannies disguised as liberties, I reject and wash my hands of.

they are purely opposition views, meant only to be talked about, and never intended to be acted on. Make you Prime Minister of England to-morrow, and you would have to abandon them.

The hours pass, and I get them over somehow, but I do not live. I endure existence, but I rarely enjoy it.

'My dear,' she murmured, 'life is an illusion.' 'But not love! Love is real: the most real, the most lasting - the sweetest and yet the bitterest thing we know.'

he who would visit an even violent act on the bent head of suffering, is a tyrant, not a judge.

'Better to try all things and find all empty, than to try nothing and leave your life a blank.

he anxiously desired to have his niece married; to make for her a suitable match: give her in charge to a proper husband, and wash his hands of her for ever. The misfortune was, from infancy upwards, Shirley and he had disagreed on the meaning of the words 'suitable' and 'proper.'

'I approve nothing Utopian. Look Life in its iron face: stare Reality out of its brassy countenance.

'I can live alone, if need be. But the question is not how to live - but how to die alone.

'You read French. Your mind is poisoned with French novels. You have imbibed French principles.'

calumny, even from the mouth of a fool, will sometimes cut into unguarded feelings.

both these women were personages of some dignity in their own estimation, and of some bulk in the estimation of others.

Hesther, your third son must certainly be a lawyer: he has the stock in trade - brass, self-conceit, and words - words - words.'

Chapter 35. Wherein Matters Make Some Progress, But Not Much