Charlotte Brontë > Quotes

“Young ladies have a remarkable way of letting you know that they think you a "quiz" without actually saying the words. A certain superciliousness of look, coolness of manner, nonchalance of tone, express fully their sentiments on the point, without committing them by any positive rudeness in word or deed.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“St John Rivers: What will you do with all your fine accomplishments? Jane Eyre: I will save them until they're wanted. They will keep.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I knew I was catching at straws; but in the wide and weltering deep where I found myself, I would have caught at cobwebs.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“Life, however, was yet in my possession; with all its requirements, and pains, and responsibilities. The burden must be carried, and want provided for, the suffering endured, the responsibility fulfilled.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I am sure, sir, I should never mistake informality for insolence: one I rather like, the other nothing free-born would submit to, even for a salary”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“This girl who stands so quiet and grave at the mouth of hell. This girl who is all quietness and sanity and innocence. You wondered why I wanted her?”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Out of obscurity I came, to obscurity I can easily return. ”
― Charlotte Brontë

“You ask me if I do not think that men are strange beings - I do indeed, I have often thought so - and I think too that the mode of bringing them up is strange, they are not half sufficiently guarded from temptation - Girls are protected as if they were something very frail and silly indeed while boys are turned loose on the world as if they - of all beings in existence, were the wisest and the least liable to be led astray.”
― Charlotte Brontë

“He that is low need fear no fall.”
― Charlotte Brontë, The Professor

“As far as my experience of matrimony goes -- I think it tends to draw you out of, and away from yourself.”
― Charlotte Brontë

“Human feelings are queer things -- I am much happier -- black-leading the stove's -- making the beds and sweeping the floors at home, than I should be living like a fine lady anywhere else.”
― Charlotte Brontë

“These struggles with the natural character, the strong native bent of the heart, may seem futile and fruitless, but in the end they do good. They tend, however slightly, to give the actions, the conduct, that turn which Reason approves, and which Feeling, perhaps too often opposes: they certainly make a difference in the general tenor of a life, and enable it to be better regulated, more equable, quieter on the surface; and it is on the surface only the common gaze will fall. As to what lies below, leave that with God. Man, your equal, weak as you, and not fit to be your judge, may be shut out thence: take it to your Maker--show Him the secrets of the spirit He gave--ask Him how you are to bear the pains He has appointed--kneel in His presence, and pray with faith for light in darkness, for strength in piteous weakness, for patience in extreme need. Certainly, at some hour, though perhaps not at your hour, the waiting hours will stir; in some shape, though perhaps not the shape you dreamed, which your heart loved, and for which it bled, the healing herald will descend.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“Provided with a case of pencils, and some sheets of paper, I used to take a seat apart from them, near the window, and busy myself in sketching fancy vignettes representing any scene that happened momentarily to shape itself in the ever-shifting kaleidoscope of imagination: a glimpse of sea between two rock; the rising moon, and a ship crossing its disc; a group of reeds and water-flags, and a naiad's head, crowned with lotus-flowers, rising out of them; an elf sitting in a hedge-sparrow's nest, under a wreath of hawthorn bloom.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Picture me then idle, basking, plump, and happy, stretched on a cushioned deck, warmed with constant sunshine, rocked by breezes indolently soft.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“Say whatever your memory suggests is true; but add nothing and exaggerate nothing.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“A waft of wind came sweeping down the laurel-walk, and trembled through the boughs of the chestnut: it wandered away-away-to an indefinite distance-it died. The nightingale's song was then the only voice of the hour: in listening to it, I again wept.”
― Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

“Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs. We are, and must be, one and all, burdened with faults in this world: but the time will soon come when, I trust, we shall put them off in putting off our corruptible bodies; when debasement and sin will fall from us with this cumbrous frame of flesh, and only the spark of the spirit will remain,—the impalpable principle of light and thought, pure as when it left the Creator to inspire the creature: whence it came it will return; perhaps again to be communicated to some being higher than man—perhaps to pass through gradations of glory, from the pale human soul to brighten to the seraph! Surely it will never, on the contrary, be suffered to degenerate from man to fiend? No; I cannot believe that: I hold another creed: which no one ever taught me, and which I seldom mention; but in which I delight, and to which I cling: for it extends hope to all: it makes Eternity a rest—a mighty home, not a terror and an abyss. Besides, with this creed, I can so clearly distinguish between the criminal and his crime; I can so sincerely forgive the first while I abhor the last: with this creed revenge never worries my heart, degradation never too deeply disgusts me, injustice never crushes me too low: I live in calm, looking to the end.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Not a tie hold me to human society at this moment - not a charm or hope calls me where my fellow-creatures are - none that saw me would have a kind thought or a good wish for me. I have no relative but the universal mother, Nature.”
― Charlotte bronte, Jane Eyre

“He fumed like a bottled storm.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Villette

“My spirits were excited, and with pleasure and ease I talked to him during supper, and for a long time after. There was no harassing restraint, no repressing of glee and vivacity with him; for with him I was at perfect ease, because I knew I suited him; all I said or did seemed either to console or revive him. Delightful consciousness! It brought to life and light my whole nature: in his presence I thoroughly lived; and he lived in mine.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“... your grasp, even in fury, would have a charm for me...”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“There was nothing to cool or banish love in these circumstances, though much to create despair. Much, too, you will think, reader, to engender jealousy: if a woman, in my position, could presume to be jealous of a woman in Miss Ingram's. But I was not jealous...Miss Ingram was a mark beneath jealousy: she was too inferior to excite the feeling. Pardon the seeming paradox; I mean what I say. She was very showy, but she was not genuine; she had a fine person, many brilliant attainments; but her mind was poor, her heart barren by nature: nothing bloomed spontaneously on that soil; no unforced natural fruit delighted by its freshness. She was not good; she was not original: she used repeat sounding phrases from books: she never offered, nor had, any opinion of her own. She advocated a high tone of sentiment; but she did not know the sensations of sympathy and pity; tenderness and truth were not in her. Too often she betrayed this...Other eyes besides mine watched these manifestations of character--watched them closely, keenly shrewdly. Yes; the future bridegroom, Mr. Rochester himself, exercised over his intended a ceaseless surveillance; and it was from this sagacity--this guardedness of his--this perfect, clear conciousness of his fair one's defects--this obvious absence of passion in his sentiments towards her, that ever-toturing pain arose.
I saw he was going to marry her, for family, perhaps political reasons, because her rank and connecions suited him; I felt he had not given her his love, and that her qualifications were ill adapted to win from him that treasure. This was the point--this was where the nerve was touched and teased--this was where the fever was sustained and fed: she could not charm him.
If she had managed the victory at once, and he had yielded and sincerely laid his heart at her feet, I should have covered my face, turned to the wall, and have died to them.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“تلك هي السبيل التي تنتهجها الأحداث في هذه الحياة. فما إن يستقر المقام بالمرء في موطنٍ من مواطن الإستراحة بهيج، حتَّى يدعوه صوتٌ ما إلى النهوض والإرتحال. لأن ساعة الراحة قد انقضت.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Fair as a lily, and not only the pride of life, but the desire of his eyes”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“You can write nothing of value unless you give yourself wholly to the the theme -- and when you so give yourself -- you lose appetite ans sleep -- it cannot be helped --”
― Charlotte Brontë

“I will attire my Jane in satin and lace, and she shall have roses in her hair and I will cover the head I love best with a priceless veil.'
'And then you won't know me, sir, and I shall not be your Jane Eyre any longer, but an ape in a harlequin's jacket, -a jay in borrowed plumes. I would as soon see you, Mr. Rochester, tricked out in stage-trappings, as myself clad in a court-lady's robe; and I don't call you handsome,sir, though I love you most dearly: far too dearly to flatter you. Don't flatter me.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“My heart is mute--my heart is mute”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“What delusion has come over me? What sweet madness has seized me?”
― Charlotte Brontë

“I, to whom nature had denied the impromptu faculty; who, in public, was by nature a cypher; whose time of mental activity, even when alone, was not under the meridian sun; who needed the fresh silence of morning, or the recluse peace of evening, to win from the Creative Impulse one evidence of his presence, one proof of his force; I, with whom that Impulse was the most intractable, the most capricious, the most maddening of masters (him before me always excepted)--a deity, which sometimes, under circumstances apparently propitious, would not speak when questioned, would not hear when appealed to, would not, when sought, be found; but would stand, all cold, all indurated, all granite, a dark Baal with carven lips and blank eye-balls, and breast like the stone face of a tomb; and again, suddenly, at some turn, some sound, some long-trembling sob of the wind, at some rushing past of an unseen stream of electricity, the irrational demon would wake unsolicited, would stir strangely alive, would rush from its pedestral like a perturbed Dagon, calling to its votary for a sacrifice, whatever the hour--to its victim for some blood or some breath, whatever the circumstance or scene--rousing its priest, treacherously promising vaticanation, perhaps filling its temple with a strange hum of oracles, but sure to give half the significance to fateful winds, and grudging to the desperate listener even a miserable remnant--yielding it sordidly, as though each word had been a drop of the deathless ichor of its own dark veins.”
― Charlotte Bronte, Villette

“And with that answer, he left me. I would much rather he had knocked me down.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre