Charlotte Brontë Quotes

“Would you not be happier if you tried to forget her severity, together with the passionate emotions it excited? Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity, or registering wrongs." - Helen Burns”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“But what is so headstrong as youth? What so blind as inexperience?”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I had not seen "Pride and Prejudice," till I read that sentence of yours, and then I got the book. And what did I find? An accurate daguerreotyped portrait of a common-place face; a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers; but no glance of a bright, vivid physiognomy, no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck. I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen, in their elegant but confined houses.”
― Charlotte Brontë

“You are afraid of me, because I talk like a sphinx.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“To be together is for us to be at once free as in solitude, as gay as in company. We talk, I believe, all day long: to talk to each other is but more animated and an audible thinking. All my confidence is bestowed on him, all his confidence is devoted to me; we are precisely suited in character - perfect concord is the result.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I would always rather be happy than dignified..”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I know my maker sanctions what I do. For the world's judgement - I wash my hands thereof. For man's opinion- I defy it”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“-Let respect be the foundation, affection the first floor, love the superstructure; Mdlle Reuters is a skillful architect.
- And interest?
-yes, no doubt; it will be the cement between every stone!”
― Charlotte Brontë, The Professor

“You think all existence lapses in as quiet a flow as that in which your youth has hitherto slid away. Floating on with closed eyes and muffled ears, you neither see the rocks bristling not far off in the bed of the flood, nor hear the breakers boil at their base. But I tell you—and you may mark my words—you will come some day to a craggy pass in the channel, where the whole of life's stream will be broken up into whirl and tumult, foam and noise: either you will be dashed to atoms on crag points, or lifted up and borne on by some master-wave into a calmer current—as I am now.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Well has Solomon said-"Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith." I would not now have exchanged Lowood with all its privations, for Gateshead and its daily luxuries.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Superstition was with me at that moment; but it was not yet her hour for complete victory: my blood was still warm; the mood of the revolted slave was still bracing me with its bitter vigour; I had to stem a rapid rush of retrospective thought before I quailed to the dismal present.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“And I do not want a stranger - unsympathising, alien, different from me; I want my kidred: those with whom I have a full fellow-feeling.”
― Charlotte Brontë

“Most things free-born will submit to anything for a salary.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“When Crimsworth praises Frances’s devoir and counsels her to cultivate her faculties, she replies not in words, but with a smile ‘in her eyes...almost triumphant,’ which seems to mean the following: ‘I am glad you have been forced to discover so much of my nature; you need not so carefully moderate your language. Do you think I am myself a stranger to myself? What you tell me in terms so qualified, I have known fully from a child.’ No words are uttered; that would be unseemly, and, the author implies, somewhat redundant.”
― Claire Harman, Charlotte Brontë: A Fiery Heart

“he gathered me near his heart. I was full of faults; he took them and me all home.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“I suspect that Jane Austen's practice of denying herself the aid of figurative language which, as much as any of her other habits of expression, repelled Charlotte Brontë, and has alienated other readers, conscious with a dissatisfaction with her style that they have not cared to analyse. ”
― Mary Lascelles, Jane Austen And Her Art

“The rage inside Charlotte crested to a peak. "I'm angry because Papa and Aunt Branwell never would have sent you here," she shouted. "Not to a charity school. Not the precious boy."

"I know that," Branwell said, his voice ragged. "I've always known that. Don't you think that might be hard to live with?”
― Lena Coakley, Worlds of Ink and Shadow

“There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs Reed, when there was no company, dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further out-door exercise was now out of the question.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Wait," Charlotte said. "I'd like to say something, if I may, Papa." He nodded, and Charlotte stood. Her siblings were still looking very grave. She hoped they were in the proper frame of mind to hear what she had to say, especially Branwell. "I have been thinking a great deal about ... My stories." She nodded significantly to them, willing them to understand that she was not talking about writing so much as about crossing over. "Papa was very wise when he called my writing a childish habit, and I think he understands that, for me, its a dangerous one as well."

The small square of paper that had caused such consternation lay in front of her on the table. Now she took it up and held it out, looking at each if her siblings in turn. "Emily. Anne. Branwell." She ripped the paper in half. Emily gasped. " I am renouncing my invented worlds and all who live there. If any of you are in the grip if a similar childish habit"- she raised an eyebrow at her brother - "I challenge you to do the same.”
― Lena Coakley, Worlds of Ink and Shadow

“It would take a great deal to crush me”
― Charlotte Brontë, The Letters of Charlotte Brontë

“Mientras tanto, el señor Brocklehurst, de pie ante la chimenea con las manos a la espalda, observaba majestuosamente a la concurrencia. De pronto, parpadeó como su algo lo hubiera deslumbrado o escandalizado, y dijo con palabras más atropelladas que de costumbre:

- Señorita Temple, ¿qué...qué le ocurre a esa muchacha de cabello rizado? ¿Pelirroja, señorita, y cubierta de rizos? - y señaló con mano temblorosa el objeto de su ultraje con el bastón.

- Es Julia Severn - respondió con voz queda la señorita Temple.

-Julia Severn, señorita. ¿Y por qué motivo tiene ella, o cualquier otra, el cabello rizado? ¿Por qué, desafiando a todas las leyes y principios de esta casa evangélica y benéfica, se muestra tan abiertamente mundana como para llevar el cabello hecho una maraña de rizos?

- Los rizos de Julia son naturales - contestó la señorita Temple, con voz aún más baja.

- ¡Naturales! Sí, pero no nos conformamos con lo natural. Quiero que estas muchachas sean hijas de Dios. ¿Por qué semejante exceso? He dado a entender una y otra vez que quiero que se recojan el cabello de manera recatada y sencilla. Señorita Temple, a esta muchacha hay que raparle del todo; haré venir al barbero mañana. Y veo a otras con un exceso parecido. Que se dé la vuelta esa chica alta. Diga que se levanten todas las de la primera clase y se vuelvan hacia la pared.
---
Estudió el envés de estas medallas humanas durante unos cinco minutos y después dictó sentencia. Sus palabras cayeron como un toque de difuntos:
- ¡Que se recorten todos los moños!
- Señorita - prosiguió él - he de servir a un Amo cuyo reino no es de este mundo. Es mi misión mortificar los deseos carnales de estas muchachas, enseñarles a vestirse con recato y sobriedad, y no con ropas caras y tocados complicados. Cada una de las jóvenes que tenemos delante lleva un mechón de cabello que la misma vanidad hubiera podido trenzar....”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“- No tienes por qué coger nuestros libros; dependes de nosotros, dice mamá; no tienes dinero, pues tu padre no te dejó nada, y deberías estar pidiendo limosna, no viviendo aquí con nosotros, hijos de un caballero, comiendo lo que comemos nosotros y llevando ropa comprada por nuestra querida madre. Yo te enseñaré a saquear mi biblioteca, porque es mía: toda la casa es mía, o lo será dentro de unos cuantos años. Ve y ponte al lado de la puerta, apartada del espejo y de las ventanas - John Reed”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“El maestro, el señor Miles, aseguraba que estaría perfectamente si se le enviasen menos pasteles y dulces; pero el corazón de su madre rechazaba tan dura opinión y se empeñaba en creer la idea más benigna de que su mala salud se debía al exceso en los estudios y, quizás, a la añoranza de su casa.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I can so clearly distinguish between the criminal and his crime; I can so sincerely forgive the first while I abhor the last”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Jane’s fictional world was so perfectly, minutely and solidly constructed that it took another brilliant and unusual writer, Charlotte Brontë, a generation later, to pull it down. Brontë memorably described Pride and Prejudice as ‘a carefully-fenced, highly cultivated garden with neat borders and delicate flowers – but no glance of a bright vivid physiognomy – no open country – no fresh air – no blue hill – no bonny beck. I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen in their elegant but confined houses.’ She concludes her demolition job with ‘these observations will probably irritate’. Yes, Charlotte Brontë, they do irritate, as you could hardly have written Jane Eyre unless Jane Austen had previously constructed something worthy of demolition.”
― Lucy Worsley, Jane Austen at Home

“No es la violencia lo que vence al odio, ni la venganza lo que cura mejor a la injuria.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“-¿Cómo no se estremece?
-Porque no tengo frío.
-¿Cómo no palidece?
-Porque no estoy mal.
-¿Cómo no quería consultar mi ciencia? -Porque no soy una necia.
La vieja emitió una carcajada cavernosa. Luego sacó una corta pipa y empezó a fumar. Después de haberse entregado a este placer, irguió su encorvado cuerpo, se quitó la pipa de los labios y, mirando fijamente el fuego, dijo subrayando las palabras:
-Usted tiene frío, usted está enferma y usted es una necia.
-Pruébemelo -dije.
-Lo haré en pocas palabras. Tiene usted frío porque está muy sola; está mal, porque le falta el mejor de los sentimientos, el mayor y más dulce que puede experimentar el hombre, y es usted necia porque, sufriendo como sufre, no da una muestra ni inicia un paso para reunirse con el que la espera.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“am I to spend all the best part of my life in this wretched bondage, forcibly suppressing my rage at the idleness the apathy and the hyperbolical & most asinine stupidity of these fatheaded oafs and on compulsion assuming an air of kindness, patience & assiduity?”
― Juliet Barker, The Brontës

“I remember looking on those two sad, earnest, shadowed faces, and wondering wether I could trace the mysterious expression which is said to foretell an early death. I had some fond superstitious hope that the column divided their fates from hers, who stood apart in the canvas, as in life she survived. I liked to see that the bright side of the pillar was towards her - that the light in the picture fell on her; I might more truly have sought in her presentment - nay, in her living face - for the sign of death - in her prime.”
― Elizabeth Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Brontë

“- Helen, ¿por qué te quedas con una niña que todos creen que es una embustera?

- ¿Todos, Jane? Vaya, sólo ochenta personas han oído que te llamasen así, y hay cientos de millones en el mundo.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre