Brontes Quotes

“...[M]y inner self moved; my spirit shook its always-fettered wings half loose. I had a sudden feeling as if I, who never yet truly lived, were at last about to taste life.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“The large, gaping flaws in the construction of the stories--mad wives in the attic, strange apparitions in Belgium--are a representation of the life she could not face; these gothic subterfuges represent the mind at a breaking point, frantic to find any way out. If the flaws are only to be attributed to the practicce of popular fiction of the time, we cannot then explain the large amount of genuine feeling that goes into them. They stand for the hidden wishes of an intolerable life.”
― Elizabeth Hardwick, Seduction and Betrayal

“Spring came late. For the children, shut in the dark, cold parsonage, adjusting to Aunt and getting over the death that brought her, the winter had seemed endless. But now the rough moor was flecked with racing cloud shadows; the maltreated holly tree had stopped weeping; the green mould on the graves had dried to an unsuggestive grey.

The church could never look cheerful. It was too black, and its voice, the bell, always said 'Fu - ner -al... fu - ner- al...' even when it was only calling them to hear one of their Papa's dramatic sermons.”
― Lynne Reid Banks, Dark Quartet: The Story of the Brontës

“It was somehow fitting that the true beginning and the end of a life occurred in the same sacred house. Anne would have praised God and Emily would have laughed. On this day, their presence was fully with me, and I am sure that Charlotte—now kissing the man she loved despite everything the world had thrown at her—felt the same twined souls invisibly at her side.”
― Amy Wolf, The Misses Brontë's Establishment

“The dry yellow heath of the moors rose around us on all sides. It was like walking on the sun.”
― Amy Wolf, The Misses Brontë's Establishment

“How many girls’ schools have expelled you?'
'This is number six,' Emma volunteered.' Papa, is Maria going to Paris? Is she?'
'No, Emma, nor anywhere else on the Continent. But she is going _somewhere_, to be sure.”
― Amy Wolf, The Misses Brontë's Establishment