Wuthering Heights

by Emily Brontë

He little imagined how my heart warmed towards him when I beheld his black eyes withdraw so suspiciously under their brows,

I felt interested in a man who seemed more exaggeratedly reserved than myself.

I know, by instinct, his reserve springs from an aversion to showy displays of feeling—to manifestations of mutual kindliness.

I ‘never told my love’ vocally; still, if looks have language, the merest idiot might have guessed I was over head and ears:

By this curious turn of disposition, I have gained the reputation of deliberate heartlessness; how undeserved, I alone can appreciate.

I thought, if I had caused the cloud, it was my duty to make an effort to dispel it.

a look of hatred; unless he has a most perverse set of facial muscles that will not, like those of other people, interpret the language of his soul.

his accidental merriment expiring quickly in his habitual moroseness.

I’m now quite cured of seeking pleasure in society, be it country or town. A sensible man ought to find sufficient company in himself.”

“Why cannot you always be a good man, father?”

I asked what was the matter, answered, she didn’t know; but she felt so afraid of dying!

They both promised fair to grow up as rude as savages;

“I shall be as dirty as I please: and I like to be dirty, and I will be dirty.”

and from singing I changed my mind to crying.

“A good heart will help you to a bonny face, my lad,”

“It is for God to punish wicked people; we should learn to forgive.” “No, God won’t have the satisfaction that I shall,”

“I only wish I knew the best way! Let me alone, and I’ll plan it out: while I’m thinking of that I don’t feel pain.”

I could not half tell what an infernal house we had.

“You’re hard to please; so many friends and so few cares, and can’t make yourself content!”

“I love the ground under his feet, and the air over his head, and everything he touches, and every word he says. I love all his looks, and all his actions, and him entirely and altogether. There now!”

It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him: and that, not because he’s handsome, Nelly, but because he’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same;

I cannot express it; but surely you and everybody have a notion that there is or should be an existence of yours beyond you.

What were the use of my creation, if I were entirely contained here?

My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff’s miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning: my g...

If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty ...

My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He’s always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being.

I told the master he got rid of all decent people only to run to ruin a little faster;

Emcash is it you???

It was not the thorn bending to the honeysuckles, but the honeysuckles embracing the thorn.

A half-civilised ferocity lurked yet in the depressed brows and eyes full of black fire, but it was subdued;

"Before I learned civility I used to scream ferociously"

Pray, don’t imagine that he conceals depths of benevolence and affection beneath a stern exterior! He’s not a rough diamond—a pearl-containing oyster of a rustic: he’s a fierce, pitiless, wolfish man.

The tyrant grinds down his slaves and they don’t turn against him; they crush those beneath them.

Now all is dashed wrong; by the fool’s craving to hear evil of self, that haunts some people like a demon!

I’ll try to break their hearts by breaking my own.

Any relic of the dead is precious, if they were valued living.

I sobbed; I was beyond regarding self-respect, weighed down by fatigue and wretchedness.

If he loved with all the powers of his puny being, he couldn’t love as much in eighty years as I could in a day.

you know that I could as soon forget you as my existence!

I’m wearying to escape into that glorious world, and to be always there: not seeing it dimly through tears, and yearning for it through the walls of an aching heart: but really with it, and in it.

You loved me—then what right had you to leave me?

I have not broken your heart—you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine.

“If I’ve done wrong, I’m dying for it. It is enough! You left me, too: but I won’t upbraid you! I forgive you. Forgive me!”

I love my murderer—but yours! How can I?”

Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!

People feel with their hearts, Ellen: and since he has destroyed mine, I have not power to feel for him:

Pulling out the nerves with red hot pincers requires more coolness than knocking on the head.

Not one in a hundred would weep at losing a relation they had just seen twice, for two afternoons.

But then there is the one hundred and first...

Never did any bird flying back to a plundered nest, which it had left brimful of chirping young ones, express more complete despair, in its anguished cries and flutterings, than she by her single “Oh!” and the change that transfigured her late happy countenance.

I was cross and low; exactly the humour suited for making the most of these disagreeable things.

He’s a pretty little darling when he’s good. I’d make such a pet of him, if he were mine. We should never quarrel, should we after we were used to each other?

I can fix him. No, really, I can.

He wanted all to lie in an ecstasy of peace; I wanted all to sparkle and dance in a glorious jubilee.