Julia Appleton > Julia's Quotes

“A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow.”
― Charlotte Brontë

“If life be a war, it seemed my destiny to conduct it single-handed.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“I am not an angel,' I asserted; 'and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself. Mr. Rochester, you must neither expect nor exact anything celestial of me - for you will not get it, any more than I shall get it of you: which I do not at all anticipate.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Flirting is a woman’s trade, one must keep in practice.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Gentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt! May your eyes never shed such stormy, scalding, heart-wrung tears as poured from mine. May you never appeal to Heaven in prayers so hopeless and so agised as in that hour left my lips: for never may you, like me, dread to be the instrument of evil to what you wholly love.”
― Charlotte Brontë , Jane Eyre

“The soul, fortunately, has an interpreter - often an unconscious but still a faithful interpreter - in the eye.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquillity: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it. Millions are condemned to a stiller doom than mine, and millions are in silent revolt against their lot. Nobody knows how many rebellions besides political rebellions ferment in the masses of life which people earth. Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts, as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, to 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, Jane Eyre

“Yet it would be your duty to bear it, if you could not avoid it: it is weak and silly to say you cannot bear what it is your fate to be required to bear.”
― 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 am not an angel," I asserted; "and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I try to avoid looking forward or backward, and try to keep looking upward.”
― Charlotte Bronte

“I must, then, repeat continually that we are forever sundered - and yet, while I breathe and think, I must love him.'

- Jane Eyre”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“It is far better to endure patiently a smart which nobody feels but yourself,
than to commit a hasty action whose evil consequences will extend to all
connected with you.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“He was the first to recognise me, and to love what he saw.”
― Movie, Jane Eyre, Jane Eyre

“Jane Eyre
"I desired more...than was within my reach. Who blames me? Many call me discontented. I couldn't help it: the restlessness is in my nature; it agitated me to pain sometimes.”
― Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

“They spoke almost as loud as Feeling: and that clamoured wildly. "Oh, comply!" it said. "Think of his misery; think of his danger — look at his state when left alone; remember his headlong nature; consider the recklessness following on despair — soothe him; save him; love him; tell him you love him and will be his. Who in the world cares for you? or who will be injured by what you do?"

Still indomitable was the reply — "I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself. I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by man. I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad — as I am now. Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? They have a worth — so I have always believed; and if I cannot believe it now, it is because I am quite insane — quite insane: with my veins running fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count its throbs. Preconceived opinions, foregone determinations, are all I have this hour to stand by: there I plant my foot.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I could not help it: the restlessness was in my nature; it agitated me to pain sometimes.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“It is a pity that doing one's best does not always answer.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“And it is you, spirit--with will and energy, and virtue and purity--that I want, not alone with your brittle frame.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I can be on guard against my enemies, but God deliver me from my friends!”
― Charlotte Brontë, The Letters of Charlotte Brontë

“If we would build on a sure foundation in friendship, we must love our friends for their sakes rather than for our own.”
― Charlotte Brontë, The Life of Charlotte Brontë