Villette Quotes

“No mockery in this world ever sounds to me so hollow as that of being told to cultivate happiness. What does such advice mean? Happiness is not a potato, to be planted in mould, and tilled with manure. Happiness is a glory shining far down upon us out of Heaven. She is a divine dew which the soul, on certain of its summer mornings, feels dropping upon it from the amaranth bloom and golden fruitage of Paradise.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“I believe in some blending of hope and sunshine sweetening the worst lots. I believe that this life is not all; neither the beginning nor the end. I believe while I tremble; I trust while I weep.”
― Charlotte Bronte, Villette

“Life is so constructed, that the event does not, cannot, will not, match the expectation.”
― Charlotte Brontë , Villette

“His mind was indeed my library, and whenever it was opened to me, I entered bliss.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“But solitude is sadness.'

'Yes; it is sadness. Life, however, has worse than that. Deeper than melancholy lies heart-break.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“Silence is of different kinds, and breathes different meanings.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“Do you like him much?'
I told you I liked him a little. Where is the use of caring for him so very much: he is full of faults.'
Is he?'
All boys are.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“Wise people say it is folly to think anybody perfect; and as to likes and dislikes, we should be friendly to all, and worship none”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“Peril, loneliness, an uncertain future, are not oppressive evils, so long as the frame is healthy and the faculties are employed; so long, especially, as Liberty lends us her wings, and Hope guides us by her star.”
― Charlotte Bronte, Villette

“The negation of severe suffering was the nearest approach to happiness I expected to know. Besides, I seemed to hold two lives - the life of thought, and that of reality.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

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

“While I loved, and while I was loved, what an existence I enjoyed!”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“To see and know the worst is to take from Fear her main advantage.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“I like to see flowers growing, but when they are gathered, they cease to please. I look on them as things rootless and perishable; their likeness to life makes me sad. I never offer flowers to those I love; I never wish to receive them from hands dear to me.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“I believe while I tremble; I trust while I weep.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“Lucy, take my love. One day share my life. Be my dearest, first on earth.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“The love, born of beauty was not mine; I had nothing in common with it: I could not dare to meddle with it, but another love, venturing diffidently into life after long acquaintance, furnace-tried by pain, stamped by constancy, consolidated by affection’s pure and durable alloy, submitted by intellect to intellect’s own tests, and finally wrought up, by his own process, to his own unflawed completeness, this Love that laughed at Passion, his fast frenzies and his hot and hurried extinction, in this Love I had a vested interest; and whatever tended either to its culture or its destruction, I could not view impassibly.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“I thought I loved him when he went away; I love him now in another degree: he is more my own. [ . . . ] Oh! a thousand weepers, praying in agony on waiting shores, listened for that voice, but it was not uttered--not uttered till; when the hush came, some could not feel it: till, when the sun returned, his light was night to some!”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“If there are words and wrongs like knives, whose deep inflicted lacerations never heal - cutting injuries and insults of serrated and poison-dripping edge - so, too, there are consolations of tone too fine for the ear not fondly and for ever to retain their echo: caressing kindnesses - loved, lingered over through a whole life, recalled with unfaded tenderness, and answering the call with undimmed shine, out of that raven cloud foreshadowing Death himself.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“I like the spirit of this great London which I feel around me. Who but a coward would pass his whole life in hamlets; and for ever abandon his faculties to the eating rust of obscurity?”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“But afterwards, is there nothing more for me in life - no true home - nothing to be dearer to me than myself?”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“...[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

“For a long time the fear of seeming singular scared me away; but by degrees, as people became accustomed to me and my habits, and to such shadows of peculiarity as were engrained in my nature - shades, certainly not striking enough to interest, and perhaps not prominent enough to offend, but born in and with me, and no more to be parted with than my identity - but slow degrees I became a frequenter of this straight narrow path.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“I doubt if I have made the best use of all my calamities. Soft, amiable natures they would have refined to saintliness; of strong, evil spirits they would have made demons; as for me, I have only been a woe-struck and selfish woman.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“~Do you like him much?
~I told you I like him a little. Where is the use of caring for him so very much? He is full of faults.
~Is he?
~All boys are.
~More than girls?
~Very likely. Wise people say it is folly to think anyboy perfect, and as to likes and diskiles, we should be friendly to all, and worship none.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“Great pains were taken to hide chains with flowers”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“I believe in that goodly mansion, his heart, he kept one little place under the skylights where Lucy might have entertainment, if she chose to call. It was not so handsome as the chambers where he lodged his male friends; it was not like the hall where he accommodated his philanthropy, or the library where he treasured his science, still less did it resemble the pavilion where his marriage feast was splendidly spread; yet, gradually, by long and equal kindness, he proved to me that he kept one little closet, over the door of which was written " Lucy's Room." I kept a place for him, too—a place of which I never took the measure, either by rule or compass: I think it was like the tent of Peri-Banou. All my life long I carried it folded in the hollow of my hand—yet, released from that hold and constriction, I know not but its innate capacity for expanse might have magnified it into a tabernacle for a host.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“I believe that creature is a changeling: she is a perfect cabinet of oddities.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“We should acknowledge God merciful, but not always for us comprehensible.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“But if I feel, may I never express?”
“Never!” declared Reason.

I groaned under her bitter sternness. Never - never - oh, hard word! This hag, this Reason, would not let me look up, or smile, or hope; she could not rest unless I were altogether crushed, cowed, broken-in, and broken down. According to her, I was born only to work for a piece of bread, to await the pains of death, and steadily through all life to despond. Reason might be right; yet no wonder we are glad at times to defy her, to rush from under her rod and give a truant hour to Imagination - her soft, bright foe, our sweet Help, our divine Hope.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette